40A Cornmarket St, Cork
Rather flying in the face of current restaurant fashion for the Spartan take on décor and design, The Cornstore harks back to an earlier era. It helps to have the operation housed in one of the city’s finer old architectural treasures, an imposing old granite building on the Coal Quay, three great Romanesque-arched windows stretching up from the ground. But walk through the door and it’s into another world entirely; deep, dark polished wood, soft, low lighting, an awful lot of glittering glass and mirror and an enticing bar stretching near enough the length of one side of the room. This is speakeasy stuff, Manhattan dining-room style. In some restaurants, you come in just to eat; in the Cornstore, you’re most definitely also on a night out beginning with a strong emphasis on cocktails. But that’s not to say they’ve forgotten about the food.
Others following a similar template can tend towards the tokenistic when it comes to the food offering but the Cornstore ethos of sourcing high-quality, local produce is genuine (also very obvious if you ever get to see the excellent range available in their Limerick retail outlet). Executive Chef Mike Ryan is from a West Waterford farming background and takes very seriously the sourcing of, for example, beef for their excellent steaks. But the high quality beef is not simply there to facilitate a tasty steak option – a Hereford beef carpaccio with a horseradish and celeriac dressing served up on a recent visit was quite delicious, translucent slices of deeply-flavoured meat melting on the tongue.
The Cornstore also pride themselves on their seafood and if a piece of sea bass served with a mango relish was anything to go by, that pride is not misplaced. That sea bass may not have been Irish but that is rather the exception; the fish of the day is invariably local and sampling on other visits prove this excellent dish was no mere flash in the pan.
And there’s someone in that kitchen with a keen appreciation of just what it takes to satisfy the sweetest tooth, perfectly judging portion size on some perfectly judged desserts – there’s a Lemon Posset on the menu that may even involve a celestial hand.
The quality of winelists offered to Irish restaurant-goers is certainly improving and the Cornstore list is very nicely varied, offering excellent choice for all, from the casual sipper to the committed oenophile. But far fewer are the restaurants that can boast a staff so universally informed about their wine list – on our visit, several of the waiting staff spoke knowledgeably and were very helpful in assisting with choosing. That was just one aspect of what proved to be attentive, efficient and overall very, very good service.
The Cornstore is quite a beast of an operation – it has obviously taken more than small change to kit the place out, it can seat numbers that place it at the upper echelon in terms of volume and they have a variety of menus for all occasions – a la carte, set menu, lunch menu, kids menu and so on). Keeping all that in mind, that they can still turn out some very good food is certainly some feat.
