Archive for April, 2006
Old Chapel Drag Race – w00t !!
Posted on April 23, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Entertainment.
Bloody Brilliant, and we only watched the practice runs.
We positioned ourselves at the finish line on the advice of a steward (“they’ll reach max speed there”). It took a while to get going but the organisation of the event was really professional. Fionn (aged 9 months) screamed every time a bike also screamed across the line. Oisín hid in a buggy, Shibs was unimpressed and Oscar went quiet.
Most of the family left after a few minutes due to the noise, leaving Oscar and myself to enjoy the smell of burning rubber.
I think we have a new annual family event on our calendar. Stunning. I don’t think I’ve ever stood a few yards from a guy doing a wheelie at approx 100mph. Anyone know what speed they were doing across the finish line?
Shutter lag on the camera was terrible so the pictures below are rubbish. I also took some video with the Ixus. Equally bad but gives some sense of the speed.
This bike belonged to a spectator not a racer. 1300cc! Bigger than the average Micra.
More motorcycle Pr0n.
Yeah baby!
The race track. “The Fast andThe Furious” has nothing on Old Chapel.
Big gap due to different spec bikes practicing together.
Someone left their bike out in the rain for too long.
Crappy Video 1 over at YouTube
Crappy Video 2 over at YouTube
[tags]West Cork Motorcycle Club, WCMCC, Old Chapel Drag Racing[/tags]
4 Comments
Bandon River Grill Restaurant Review
Posted on April 23, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Restaurants, Reviews.
Bandon River Grill
Food style/ethnicity: Grill
Price: 30 – 40 (Euro)
Location:
The Courtyard
New Road
Bandon, Co Cork
Ireland
A few weeks before Easter I noticed a new sign go up where Roco’s restaurant used to be. Roco’s was a middle-of-the-road place which I ate in twice. The food was fine and the place was always hopping. I was very surprised when they shut it down. But Roco’s had one awful feature – the room itself. It just felt bitterly cold with one entire wall of glass and a tiled floor. I just did not like eating there because I didn’t feel comfortable. Harsh and echoey.
The name of the new place really caught my eye “Bandon River Grill”. Oh ho I thought, someone else who thinks a steak and frites place is sorely missing in the area? I have this idea that a restaurant like Les Halles where Anthony Bourdain works in NY would go down a storm here (and anywhere). Good simple classic food served in basic relaxed surroundings with a big buzz and great atmos. Note that I have never been there, I just have his cookbook, his other food books and I’ve seen the restaurant on one of his tv shows.
At that time the Grill still looked under construction so I waited a bit and then stopped for a look at the menu just before Easter weekend. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. A dinner menu with just a few items – steak, fish, pork and veggie. All “of the day” so no detailed descriptions. Lunch looked great too with fab sounding burgers and lots of “all you can eat” sides. Total focus on fresh local ingredients served as you like it and the size you like it. I also spotted an ad from them in the local Bandon Opinion seeking “fun” waiting staff and offering very good hourly rates.
The signs were good, I booked a table for last Friday and my dear lady wife and I tootled on down at 7pm for dinner. The entrance area (which used to be the wine bar part of Roco’s) seemed little changed. I was a bit thrown to find a very genteel welcome with live piano music in the background. There appeared to be a display cabinet for food in the corner with a chefy guy behind it and some patrons in front. All of the waitresses were wearing what they called “cheerfeeder” outfits which looked very American and themed-diner style. All wore wireless headsets.
We were shown to the table and had the “system” explained to us. We took a quick glance at the menu which really had nothing on it and then over to the display cabinet where the chef-guy explained each type of starter, fish main, steak main and other that was available that evening. Meat from Martin Carey with beef hung for a fortnight and fish fresh every day from Kinsale. I went for a simple smoked salmon starter and Catherine went for the crab-in-iceberg spring roll thing. An excess of iceberg in both cases but they looked fine. I picked the huge hunk of T-bone that I wanted (if I had gone for sirloin or fillet then he would have cut it to order), Catherine picked the monkfish on a lemongrass skewer with a sorrel sauce. All of the other fish can be cooked whatever way you like but obviously they have some standard recipes.
The waitresses were very very friendly and chatty and both mentioned that they were students. But the owners really need to do some work on the overall efficiency and accuracy of the service. Over the three courses, every person working there including the guy manning the display and the maitre’d served our table. Yet despite having all of those people attending to us, Catherine’s sauce was forgotten, no refills were offered on any of the side dishes and we were asked twice what wine we wanted. Clearly it is early days but I don’t see the point of the headsets if they cannot co-ordinate themselves better.
The starters were simple but good. I do have a huge aversion to iceberg but the idea of relying on good ingredients worked well. My steak was a lovely hunk of meat but was slightly overdone. Considering there was only a few tables occupied, they need to do better there. Catherine’s monkfish really needed the sauce as it was too dry on its own.
The idea of the same side dishes with everything is neat and is obviously a big help to the kitchen but I question having monkfish, mashed spud and frites. They also make a big deal about the gravy which was excellent and they provided a little dish of two mustards and horseradish. Despite all of that I would prefer bearnaise with the steak.
I just had ice-cream for dessert which was lovely. Catherine had chocolate pud which was way too dry and needed some of my ice-cream. Coffee was from a standard filter machine and refills were offered. Freshly made and good quality. The bill came to €86 incl one glass of red wine and two sparkling waters. I think this is too pricey and may cause them problems with filling the place at night. Clearly good ingredients cost money but it does look like they are over-staffed for the level of business they are doing.
I really love what these people are trying to achieve, but I see two big problems in the current setup. The first is the room; as I said, I hate it. They have to do something to warm the look of it up. Maybe mats under each table or even 1970’s mats on the walls. Those floor tiles are just awful. I am sure a full re-fit would cost too much but the feel of the place is just wrong. Until it becomes a warm, comfy, welcoming place to eat, they will always have a problem.
The second problem has to do with the confused message they are sending. I was expecting somewhere laid back, relaxed with maybe even some booths where the emphasis was on great simple food, friendly service and being somewhere people liked to hang out. They nearly have it right with the food but they have mixed this with piano music, a formal dining setup and just being “too quiet”.
In particular, the style of music on the piano is totally wrong. Maybe they should think about something more bluesy or jazzy (but dear god, not jazz). Some Ray Charles tunes or something with some energy. In fact, I think that that is the thing I was missing on the night: energy. Back to the words buzz and atmos.
I don’t think I have ever said this about a restaurant, but I think they need to head down-market and try to attract a younger (but not teenage) customer base. It looks like that is what they do for lunch or at least I hope so based on the menu.
I will definitely be back and I do want to try it out at lunchtime, but I am concerned that they may not last hugely long in their current format. I am sure they will start tweaking it as they go forward and see what works and what doesn’t. As long as they keep the focus on the ingredients then they will always have my support. I would encourage you to try it out because their approach to food is exactly what is needed in the mid-range Irish restaurant scene.
One note on all my restaurant reviews: I am just an average joe who likes his food. I am not a writer or food expert and I have no experience in the food or catering industry. This is not the review section of the Irish Times. So if the owner of any place I review disagrees with anything I ever say, please feel free to add a comment. I think it could really be of benefit to us all. And don’t be shy about it, I am not into flame-wars or doing character assassinations. My aim is to have as many high-quality good value restaurants on my doorstep as possible.
[tags]Bandon River Grill[/tags]
No Comments
Sushi Saturday
Posted on April 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food.
8 years after I first bought a tube of wasabi to make sushi, I finally managed to get everything in one place and made my first ever batch. I followed the instructions in “Rachel’s Favourite Food for Friends“. It turned out damned tasty but not exactly pretty. I’m sure sushi experts would cry over my efforts. Some pictures below. In case you are wondering, the kids medicine syringe was to measure out 30ml of rice vinegar. I wasn’t in the scouts for most of my youth for nothing!
One question – why does the seaweed smell of fish?
[tags]Sushi[/tags]
2 Comments
Playground in Leap – What’s the story?
Posted on April 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Family.
Headed down to Skibb the morning for a few reasons: give the demon children a sleep, get some fish for a fish pie, go to the excellent playground there.
On the way I noticed a fabulous playground in Leap. Beautiful wooden structures all inside a big metal fence. But then I noticed the sign on the gate “closed until further notice”. Anyone know why? If it is due to insurance then I’ll be forced to go to the nearest courthouse, find a savage claiming compo and headbutt them.
How about all responsible citizens sign a disclaimer in perpetuity? “I the undersigned do hereby undertake never to sue the organs of the state when either I or my children hurt themselves making use of state property. In addition I shall strive to seek out those parasites who make the lives of all the rest of us more expensive with their professional victimhood and their constant sueing of the state because of the activities of their numbskull children and I shall encourage them to move to the Blasket islands where they can set up a commune and all sue each other”.
Of course, maybe the playground just isn’t finished yet.
[tags]Leap, Compo, Playgrounds[/tags]
2 Comments
Old Chapel Motorbike Drag Race
Posted on April 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Entertainment.
West Cork Motorcycle Club Annual Drag Race
Begins: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 at 1:00 PM
Ends: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 at 6:00 PM
Location:
Old Chapel Bandon, Co Cork Ireland
Tags: West Cork Motorcycle Club, Old Chapel
2 Comments
Those naked plums do it again
Posted on April 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Humour.
I received the following message from Web Filtering software inside a multi-national corporation today:
They think eGullet, the best food forum on the web, is a GPORN site. I’ll need help with this one. Guava Pr0n? Grapefruit Pr0n? Gremolata Pr0n?
Next week, Firewall rates “Give My Head Peace” site as Humorous.
[tags]eGullet[/tags]
No Comments
Google Adsense – $4 in 5 months. Finally I can buy that Audi RS6
Posted on April 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Technology.
For fun, I set up Google AdSense last year. It is behind those ads you see in the sidebar of the blog. I didn’t expect to make much money and never thought I’d be able to live off the Ad revenue.
I just checked my total income and it is now at $4.02! Woo hoo. It seems to me that there is a very good reason for it – the ads are complete shite.
At least 80% of the blog is about food but it almost never includes food ads. I never ever mention dating but there is always some poxy ad for a dating agency. I once mentioned a Ford Mustang and for weeks had ads for US car dealers. The day they do ads for hair transplants, I’m taking them off the site.
Having said all of that, I added an Amazon ad recently for comparison and only selected food as a category. Income to date? £0.00!
Oh well, I’ll just stick to the day job then.
technorati tags: AdSense, Amazon.co.uk
6 Comments
Looks like Saturday was a success
Posted on April 17, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, BandonFarmersMarket, Family, Food.
After all my encouragement to go to Saturday’s Bandon Farmer’s Market I ended up missing it myself. I got up a bit late and had to get ready for our weekend in Rosslare. I ended up squeezed for time and didn’t want to be shopping hassled. So, I headed off with the four angels and left Catherine to plant the garden and paint the loo. Result? Garden good, loo baaaaaadddddd. We’re not quite in marriage counselling but that red has to go.
Back to the topic at hand; Catherine popped down to the market between 1.30 and 2.00 to see what treats were remaining to be had. Some of the stalls were nearly sold out and all the others seemed to have been doing great business! I am really thrilled for all the vendors that the interest has held up. Any vendors reading this who want to report on numbers? Looks like arriving early is the best way to get what you want.
Catherine then popped down to Clon for some awful wall paint and popped into Lettercollum. They were sold out of their fab quiches and pies too. Bummer for Cath but another sign that quality sells.
Happily for her, I returned today with all children alive and in possession of their limbs and bearing gifts of Eves Pud and Lemon Cake from my awesome mother. Let me tell ya, eating and typing at the same time is tough.
[tags]Bandon Farmers Market[/tags]
3 Comments
Two blogs well worth a look
Posted on April 16, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Ireland, Uncategorized.
The biggest hole in the Irish Blogging scene is the lack of women bloggers. I have no real idea why so few women blog, particularly when examples like Dooce are there to show what is possible. It probably just boils down to the fact that, in general (and by “in general” I am in no way trying to invoke a stereotye or in any way label any sub-grouping of humanity. Please don’t hurt me), women don’t get a kick out of geeky gadgets and buzzwords and only start using technology when it becomes genuinely useful. For example, high temperature ceramics really only moved out of geeky labs and into mainstream usage with the invention of the GHD Straightener. He ducks, he runs.
So I am really happy to report that things are starting to change and I have to recommend two blogs to you.
The first has been around for several months and is called “That Friday Feeling“. It consists of the musings of a thirtysomething single woman living somewhere in rural Ireland. She talks about life, men, health, weight and living down the bog. Curly K has a great turn of phrase and is always a good read, not just for girlies.
The second I found out about because the author also has me on her blogroll. Her blog is called “The Arse End of Ireland” and only appears to have started very recently. I know it is early days but the signs are so good that I am going to pin my colours to the mast and offer the opinion that we may have finally found the female Twenty! And in this case it doesn’t look like a character but seems to be a real person. The Swearing Lady is very very funny with just the right level of exasperation, grumpiness and cynicism.
They are both in my Bloglines subscriptions and deserve to get much much bigger readerships. Check em out and let me know what you think.
[tags]That Friday Feeling, Curly K, Arse End of Ireland, Twenty Major, Women Bloggers,Dooce[/tags]
10 Comments
My Podcast List
Posted on April 14, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Technology.
On the off-chance you are interested in having a look at what I listen to on the way to work. I have exported this list from Juice (ex-iPodder), uploaded it to my web-site and I’m now presenting it out using a new OPML viewer called Grazr. Just click here and then down through the entries to see the list. You can even listen to some of them inside it.
[tags]grazr,OPML,podcast, Juice, iPodder[/tags]
No Comments
Reminder – Bandon Farmer’s Market
Posted on April 14, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Food.
Second Bandon Farmer’s Market
Begins: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 at 10:00 AM
Ends: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 at 2:00 PM
Location:
The Old Market Garden, Bandon,, Co Cork, Ireland
Just a quick reminder that the second Bandon Farmer’s is on Easter Saturday. I can’t recommend it highly enough.Wonderful produce, really friendly people.
Location is the carpark of the old SuperValu, Old Mace, New Spar.
I’m looking forward to checking out all the stalls I missed the last time.
[tags]Bandon Farmers Market[/tags]
2 Comments
New Honda Civic ad on Channel 4
Posted on April 13, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Motor Cars, Uncategorized.
One of the best TV ads I have ever seen for a motor car. Must be a couple of minutes long and surely costs a fortune to broadcast. But worth it for them if they are ever to change the UK demographic from 55-85 to 25-35. They rightly have much younger buyers in Ireland. Just checked and they have some of the sound effects from the ad on their UK site too.
I had a look at the car in Kevin O’Leary’s the other day (whilst on my bike, strangely). Fabulous looking and much bigger than it appears in pictures. Not that I’ll ever get one (some day I want to test drive a Type-R), our next car is a VW Caravelle.
Finbarr Galvin up the road is selling a 1979 Roller. No price tag. Now that’s what you need for sitting in traffic jams. Could you imagine arriving into work driving one? Would I have to wear a suit and smoke a pipe before they’ll give me a drive in it? Or would the Civic be more comfortable?
[tags] Honda Civic, Rolls Royce, VW Caravelle[/tags]
No Comments
2006 – The year of the unsubscription?
Posted on April 12, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Entertainment, Technology.
Every year is the “Year of Something”. In the web world, many are calling 2006 the year of podcasting and I do think it is the year that a big shift in peoples reading/listening habits is happening. I have formulated my theory using a highly scientific principle derived from dianetics called “my clueless opinion based on a sample size of one”.
Let me explain:
In 1982 I started reading CAR Magazine. In 24 years it has gone from being the fount of all motoring knowledge for a young man to being Carsmopolitan with nice purdy pictures of cars. For the first time ever, yesterday I spotted an edition of it and thought “nah, won’t bother”. I’ve got RSS feeds of Autoblog and Jalopnik to provide my motoring fix.
In 1984 I started reading Personal Computer World (PCW). I’ve missed a couple of editions over 22 years but not many. I gave up in March. A couple of good tech blogs plus a few RSS feeds for the main tech sites has made it irrelevant despite continuing to be a fine publication.
In 1997 I started reading Slashdot as my first web-site of the day. Last year I switched to the RSS feed. Lat month I unsubscribed. It is no longer compelling in the face of thousands of specialist sites and blogs that cover the same topics with more depth and without teenage script kiddies adding noise.
In 1996 I started reading Salon as my second web-site of the day. When they went premium, so did I. Despite all their financial problems it was one of the best sites on the web for years. The articles were witty, intelligent, informative and challenging. And then Bush won the first time. Bit by bit the hysteria grew and the interest diminished. When he won the second time, they completely lost the plot. They became a haven for whacko conspiracy theories and all the while they couldn’t see that they were screeching to the converted. They now publish nothing that cannot be replaced by a few decent entertainment and political blogs. I won’t be re-subscribing.
I gave up on the paper version of the Irish Times years ago. I cannot believe there in no-one in the Irish media with a few bob and some vision who couldn’t blow ireland.com out of the water with some high-quality, non-happy-clappy-tree-huggy-gosh-were-so-smart-americans-are-so-dumb journalism. Anyone? There are some excellent Irish blogs covering politics but very few really covering a wide range of current affairs who aren’t secretly hoping to get a job eventually with The IT.
I’ve been listening to the radio for as long as I can remember the farming programme being on during my tea. I just did a search on “Chenoumption, quare name but great stuff” to discover after all these years that it was “Cheno Unction” (a barrier ointment for use on lesions on cow’s teats if you must know). I now listen to live radio for maybe 30 minutes a week. When your interests are tech, food and comedy, Irish radio only intermittently meets your needs. I now just listen to a bunch of great US podcasts, PhantomFM, Gift Grub, Winter Food, a few Irish podcasts and a wee bit of Ricky Gervais instead.
TV has escaped because of the format – 32″ on the diagonal beats 2″x2″any day (as the bishop…). But with Sky+ I almost never watch it as it was scheduled and ads are all at 30x speed.
So there you have it: 190 RSS feeds in Bloglines, 25 podcast feeds in Juice, a bit of telly and everything else can shag off with itself.
Or maybe it’s just me?
[tags]CAR Magazine, PCW,Salon, The Irish Times, TV, RSS, Cheno Unction, Jalopnik, Autoblog, Slashdot[/tags]
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The Amstrad Cock Chair
Posted on April 12, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment.
They really missed a trick on The Apprentice tonight. What man wouldn’t buy a chair shaped like a giant knob? Light Cubes for £85, me hole.
Syed is a god of sales: “these are the future of fuel cans” – said with a totally straight face. A full recovery after his disasterous car sales technique where I am sure they cut some of his patter with one couple : “This car is made of pure gold. It will be worth one billion pounds in three years time. If you buy it, I promise to give you my first born son, and my second born. Pleeeeeeease buy it.”
But I still miss Jo.
Best line of the night came from Margaret when she described Sharon, Syed and Tuan as “The Whinger, the Liar and the Planner”.
Whew, he finally fired the whingey griping gooseberry-sucking sour-pussed Scot.
Technorati Tags: The Apprentice
2 Comments
StructuredBlogging.org site re-launched
Posted on April 10, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, StructuredBlogging, Wordpress.
The totally revamped StructuredBlogging.org site has gone live. Richard MacManus and the gang have done a tremendous job and I think it is now communicating the whole idea in a far more effective way than it did in the past. They explain it far better than I can here so go and have a read.
If you read this blog regularly, you will have noticed some posts which appear to have more structure than others (mainly my reviews and event notifications). It takes no extra effort for me to do the posts in that form and in fact, in some ways, makes it a lot easier. So even if there was no other upside than making reviews easier to write, I would be happy to make use of the Structured Blogging software.
But the long term aim of the effort is to enable new web-sites and services which can make use of that extra structure and create systems we haven’t even dreamt about yet. This is one of those efforts which is very dependent on average bloggers like me generating the content in the first place so I am happy to do my little bit and get my own benefits too.
Richard very kindly mentioned me in his announcement of the re-vamp, but to be honest I did very little and should have helped more. Also, I have been very remiss in not following up on the structured recipe ideas which was tossed around recently. Unfortunately a new work location with a shockin’ commute is chewing up a lot of my time (and the garden is in a brutal state!). I really do want to get started on this again as there is already discussion on the microformats site about a recipe microformat to which I should contribute.
If you have a Moveable Type or Wordpress Blog (not wordpress.com), I really really encourage you to install the Structured Blogging plug-in and play with it. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its utility. And once some of those new services start being rolled out, you’ll find yourself wayyyy ahead of the game!
If you are interested in some of the ideas on where Marc Canter thinks this is all going, have a read of the roadmap.
The Pubsub guys who do a lot of the work on structured blogging have their own announcement here.
Also, if you wonder about the importance of microformats which underpin structured blogging, well a certain Bill G is a fan.
Finally, Bob Wyman of Pubsub has a superb post on the open web vs the closed web and how structured blogging is part of the open revolution. In fact there are many compelling arguments being made on the structured blogging mailing list which I wish were being re-published by their authors on their blogs.
[tags]StructuredBlogging.org, Structured Blogging, Microformats[/tags]
2 Comments
Blog Theme Upgraded to Connections Reloaded v1.5
Posted on April 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Wordpress.
This site runs on the Wordpress blogging platform and uses a “Theme” called Connections Reloaded. The theme defines the look and feel of the site. Ajay D’Souza, the creator of this great theme, has just released v1.5 and I have upgraded to that. So far I have spotted no problems and I like all of the improvements. Still have to get my head around these new Wordpress Widgets.
Ajay’s announcement with a list of changes is here.
[tags]Connections Reloaded, Wordpress Theme[/tags]
3 Comments
Sorrento’s Italian Restaurant
Posted on April 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Restaurants, Reviews.
Sorrento’s
Food style/ethnicity: Irish-Italian
Price: 25 – 35 (Euro)
Location:
Jct of South Main St and Market St
Bandon Co Cork
Ireland
Granny Mary was down for a few days and was a wee star to mind the bairns whilst we went out for a quick bite. We both had a hunger on us for steaks and headed towards Paidrigín’s which we have never eaten in. They were full. So we tried Broly’s to discover that their night-time offering had not lasted and they were shut (a big pity, I really liked what they did). We were flummoxed until I suddenly realised that Sorrento’s, the Italian place smack bang in the middle of Bandon, probably did steaks too.
We ate there once over two years ago and were not really impressed but they went under new managment and I have heard some good things in the comments on this blog about it. The menu in the window confirmed a decent selection of steaks.
They were reasonably busy but not full so we got a table. The menu was pretty standard Irish-Italian fare with Spag Bol, Lasagne etc but they also had a fine looking selection of pizzas, good specials and the steak list really did look good.
To start, Catherine had what was described as foccacia but was actually a hard dough base with tomato etc on top. She didn’t think it was very good. Throughout the entire meal, there were people collecting pizzas, so we must check them out with the kids the next time.
I went with the same thing that I always do in an Italian, Antipasta Misto. It was good with salami, parma, chorizo, sun-dried toms, artichokes and these really tasty little preserved mushrooms which I have never had before. It came with a bunch of frissee/rocket type salad which was undressed since they had that old-fashioned (but should have a revival) oil/vinegar combo on the table. Only criticism would be that I’d drop the chorizo for something like bresaola or another italian salami.
Catherine changed her mind on the steak and plumped for the creamy monkfish special. I got the Gorgonzola steak. Whilst we were waiting we eyeballed the plates going to all the other tables. Big portions of tasty looking nosh. Ours arrived and were equally big.
The steak came with some baby spuds, more of that salad, a nice ratatouille-style veg mix and the sauce which wasn’t as “blue” tasting as I expected. But the steak, holy cow the steak. I think maybe one of the best I have had in the past year. No joke. A big chewy blood-dripping hunk of cow. Absolutely perfectly cooked. I had asked for sirloin in preference to fillet but I think it might have been rump which is a much tastier cut. The menu said it came from a local craft butcher so it was probably either from Dan or Martin and both of them do really great beef. I relished every mouthful.
Catherine’s monkfish was fine but not great. The monkfish had been cut up small rather than being done either as medallions or as one piece. The sauce was a bit heavy too. She did polish it off tho.
We went for the old reliables Tiramisu and Panna Cotta for dessert both of which were good. Two double espressos finished the whole thing nicely.
All through the service was friendly and attentive but not in our faces. I had a glass of house red which was spot-on and the sparkling water was San Pellegrino which I like.
Total came to €78 which is pricey for a local place. If it had come in under €70, I’d have been happier. But the reality is that the steak I had last night beat the one given to a dining partner in Isaac’s during the week and you’ll find Isaac’s in most food guides. The Sorrento’s one was cheaper, bigger and far better cooked.
This is a local restaurant doing unpretentious, tasty meals with solid ingredients. If you are in Bandon and feel like a decent plate of food, go have a look.
Tags: Sorrentos, Italian-Irish
1 Comment
Serenity
Posted on April 8, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Reviews.
[tags]Serenity, Joss Whedon[/tags]
No Comments
King Kong
Posted on April 8, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Reviews.
Krap
[tags]King Kong[/tags]
No Comments
Food Timeline
Posted on April 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food.
Marc Canter has a nice link over to a Food Time Line showing the when, why and what of a bunch of different foods like ice-cream, french onion soup and worcestershire sauce. Well worth a read if you ever wondered when things like fish and chips became popular.
[tags]FoodTimeLine, MarcCanter[/tags]
