Conor’s Bandon Blog

The recent review of CX Oriental by Messy Chef was the final push I needed to check this place out today after months of saying I must. It’s just fantastic. If you have ever raved about Asia Market in Dublin, this is 10x better.

If you have driven past Kinsale Road Roundabout in the past few months you can’t have missed the huge signs for CX Oriental Cash and Carry. Whilst Cork has had the brilliant Mr Bell’s in The English Market for years, it suffers from lack of space and the awkwardness of getting to it so this morning I finally made the trip to the Cash and Carry.

It’s pretty easy to find. Head past Harvey Normans off the Kinsale Road Roundabout, take the left at the lights onto Tramore Road and watch out for the many signs. My first surprise (and relief) was that they take credit cards. My second was that they have a noodle bar restaurant there open 7 days a week which was hopping.

The place is massive. It starts with a lot of huge freezers filled with all sorts of fish, meat and desserts. I got some tiger prawns and some spring roll sheets.

The fresh produce area and fridge is small but jammed full of stuff you just won’t get elsewhere including veg I’ve never seen before, multiple types of tofu, chillis, enoki mushrooms, mangoes and drinks. The fresh fish section looked awesome too but I didn’t get anything today.

I put together a list of ingredients from Rick Stein’s new Far Eastern book and found everything on it with no problems. They also obviously sell in bulk to restaurants and had lots of the Musgraves type things like foil containers and cups, in addition to woks, chopsticks, strainers, steamers etc.

Not much else to say except if you are doing any sort of Far Eastern cooking then it will be hard to keep you away from the place. The value is also stunningly good compared to supermarkets.

Here are some pictures I took whilst shopping:

We were recently taken out to dinner by my parents and decided to try the Malt House Granary in Clonakilty. We had only been once before, 5 years ago, and had not liked the heavy food. But a recent review which highlighted the new ownership made us want to try again. And oh boy were we glad we did.

We like eating very early and sat down at 7.30 to a totally empty restaurant which had me worried. I needn’t have. By 9pm they were turning people away at the door.

The menu is a great mix of local produce with a strong focus on fish and shellfish. Finally a restaurant in West Cork that offers something other than 5 different types of white fish!

As with other great meals I have had recently (like in Fenn’s Quay), I’ll let the pictures do the talking below. In summary, superb cooking with fantastic deep savoury flavours and a lightness of touch.

The portion sizes were on the overly-large size but the value was amazing. Where most places seem to try and get €22+ for mains, they were mid-teens for almost everything. We all raved about the food but were bursting at the seams as we left. We agreed that a main+coffee would make a fantastic early quick filling dinner for little more than you’d pay in a thousand crappy restaurants all over Ireland.

On the drive back through Clon we spotted several other restaurants that looked almost empty. If they want to stay in business, they should study what Elaine McCarthy and her team are doing in the Malt House Granary. It’s simple to say but hard to do: “fantastic fresh food, cooked with skill and sold with value in mind”.

I think I’ve found my new favourite fish restaurant in Ireland. Yes it is that good.