A last minute decision to pop down here for Sunday lunch turned out to be a total success. Fantastic seafood in a relaxed atmosphere with serene views of Clonakilty Bay. If they could just do something about parking, it would be perfect.

I’ve eaten in Deasy’s once before and thoroughly enjoyed it. For some reason they popped into my head this morning and I hopped into the car with four of the five monsters to see if they were still doing Sunday Lunch. The usual crawl to Clon ensued followed by the twisty road to Ring.

I knew the parking had been bad but time had dulled my memory. It’s brutal. Four spaces in front of the pub and then you have to travel a few hundred yards to find a roadside spot. Fine as an adult, a total pain (and dangerous) if you have kids. I had to circle three times before parking. Just in case, I ran down and discovered that they didn’t open for lunch until 1. So we headed over to the newly revamped playground in Clon. This looks great but now seems much more oriented towards older kids. My middle-uns were scared to climb the ladders to the slides.

Back we trotted to Ring and luckily one of the four spaces was free and we parked right at the door. It was still pretty quiet at 1pm but people arrived bit by bit over the following hour. We were seated towards the back which made sense from a safety perspective. The staff and owner were very friendly throughout. The lack of a baby-seat was a bit of a pain but not the end of the world. After seeing the usual stroppiness of our four demons, they gave us some crayons and colouring sheets which calmed everyone down.

The menu is a big step above what you’d expect from a rural Irish pub. The three course lunch menu is €30 and looks great value to me. However, as our family meals are all about speed, I went straight to the main courses. Initially I was concerned that there was nothing very child-friendly on the menu but then I copped myself on and realised they should be eating the same stuff as me.

So I ordered three half portions of Monkfish and Fennel Risotto with puttanesca salsa for them and a Hake with Lemon Butter and Swiss Chard for me. They arrived reasonably quickly on adult stopwatches but an eternity in kid-time. I tried to explain “cooking on demand” to the kids but failed.

Of course all them said “yeuch, I’m not eating that” as soon as the plates were put on the table. Rather than get hassled, I let them be and started on my hake. Never ones to miss an opportunity to annoy me, two of them asked to taste the hake and both decided they loved it, the little sods. I split mine between them and then took over their plates of risotto. Dishes of lovely baby spuds and one of the best selections of vegetables I’ve ever seen in an Irish restaurant appeared too.

Myself and the two middlers had a bit of everything. Baby would eat nothing. 2 year old wouldn’t touch anything until near the end, at which point he let me feed him a mix of fish, risotto, carrots and spuds.

Oh, I nearly forgot to say, the food was fantastic. The fish perfectly cooked, the flavours subtle and not overpowering, the vegetables beautiful. Apologies for the lack of pics and menu details but I really had my hands full.

The two boys began messing too loudly so it was time to go. The bill for the food plus three 7-ups and a Ballygowan came to a refreshingly low €53. We’ll be back very soon avec wife and fifth child so I can sample more and have both hands available to eat with.

I did a last-minute race down to The Fish Shop in Union Hall this morning to check it out. It’s as good as they say! Great selection of fish, shellfish, gourmet seafood products and wine. Well worth travelling to.

So my lazy ass didn’t get up early enough and I left Bandon at 12 knowing they shut at 1pm on a Saturday. I made it to Union Hall by 12:45 after spending the journey as far as Rosscarbery behind someone who averaged 35 MPH. The three younger squirts came with me and were just as impressed by the foggy views in Glandore as I was. The whole area is just lovely.

The shop was hopping when I arrived and lots of empty trays told me I’d left it too late. The guy serving confirmed that it had been a really busy morning. Given the horrible weather I decided to do a fish pie and I bought hake, smoked haddock, prawns (frozen since they were sold-out of fresh) and mussels. Add 6 scallops for tomorrows dinner and the total came to a very reasonable €38.

You just know you are getting ultra fresh produce in a fishing village and there is something for everyone. I particularly liked the look of the John Dory, Sea Bream and Sea Bass. They have a lots of live crab, lobster and oysters too. The display cabinet had some very interesting products like smoked tuna and they also have lots of the ususal frozen shellfish. I didn’t get a chance to check out the wine but I will on the next visit.

The perfect fish shop?

I think I’ve pretty much seen every TV programme that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has made. The quality/interest has varied over the years but I’m really digging (pun intended) this new series.

The show has the same premise as things like Jamie at Home where the focus is on growing and cooking seasonally. Obviously this is all about Spring and early summer and the first episode focused on lettuce, spinach etc.

You won’t see a huge number of recipes but you will see different approaches to vegetables and produce so that they go centre stage. BBQing Little Gems is something I’m definitely going to try.

Two other aspects of the show are a bit shoe-horned in but still welcome. He’s reprising the smallholding idea from his chicken series and following/helping a group of families in Bristol create an allotment with a few animals (initially pigs). I liked the fact that the kids were far more down to earth about the fact that pigs are lovely animals but they are also meat. Some of the more flighty adults should listen to them!

The “get a vegetarian to eat meat” section was odd but one of my favourite bits. The woman wasn’t a proper vegetarian in the sense that she just decided meat was “icky” when she was younger and stopped eating it rather than having any philosophical issues with it. She was taught how to break down a lamb carcass by Hugh’s butcher which reminded me of him doing the same thing on a pig in Ballymaloe several years ago. They then had lamb burgers which she liked and lamb neck which she didn’t.

Hugh also made dandylion and burdock beer from the local hedgerows. The guy helping him had previously had a bad pint of same many years previously and was very dubious. However, three weeks of brewing and Hugh had a winner on his hands. I’m almost tempted to try.

The honey face-off with the kid from Hackney was great fun and the fact that you can move bees 3 feet or 3 miles but nothing in between was news to me. To move them a few hundred yards, you have to move them a few miles first and then bring them back or they get confused by the landmarks. So bee brains can store landmark information? That’s better than many people

So an odd mish-mash of ideas and snippets but it all hangs together well. If you are interested in food gardening and cooking, as I am, you should watch it.

An unsatisfying mix of excellent food and wine with haphazard service and crazy pricing. The most expensive meal we’re ever had but sadly not the best.

Regular readers of the blog know that I was blown away by the documentary on Dylan McGrath getting his Michelin star for Mint. When my parents gave me a 40th birthday present of a meal for two there, I was gobsmacked and couldn’t wait to go. We finally got there last weekend and left a few hours later confused and unsatisfied.

Mint is based in what I think used to be a fish shop/deli in Ranelagh in Dublin. Whilst Ranelagh has moved on from it’s Chew n Chat and Pat Grace’s Famous Fried Chicken roots, it still feels like student-land to me. First impressions on arriving at the restaurant were poor since they have kept the old crappy shop-door that you’d expect to see in a Qik-E-Mart.

The rest of this review will mention Petrus here and there. Why? Because it is also a Michelin starred restaurant, the bill was lower and it was the best dining experience of our lives.

We were greeted and seated at a table that was precisely 6 inches from the one next to it. We may as well have sat in the laps of the people next to us since we could hear every word, and vice versa. Of all the problems with the meal, the room is one of the worst. It’s simply unacceptable for a restaurant that charges these prices. The stupid mirror trick fools no-one. At one point I got elbowed by the bread guy as he tried to serve the adjoining table. Losing a table or two would be a major revenue blow for them so they just have to move - immediately.

After a bit of discussion we decided to try the Tasting Menu with wines. The sommelier asked if we had any preferences on the wine but we just put ourselves entirely in his hands. I have to say that all his selections were fantastic. Every wine felt perfect for the dish that it accompanied. Even the dessert wine, which I hate, worked well. A big thank you to him for giving us a menu to take home with all the wines written down beside the  courses.

After a beautiful mouth-explosion taster trio involving foams, jellies and mini-soups we moved to the tasting menu. It was as follows (with apologies for the spellings on the wines):

• Roasted Scallops with caramelised chicoree, blood orange and black grapes - This was stunning. I loved every part of the dish. One of the highlights of the night. Wine was Motto Piane Sauvignon Blanc 2007 from Italy. I didn’t even know they did Sauvignon in Italy. I’ll be looking out for some from now on.

• Fois Gras and prune terrine with pear puree, air dried duck and pickled pear slices - Another fabulous dish. Catherine’s favourite. Wine was Cuvee Marie from Charles Hours 2003 from South West France. Another seriously great wine.

At this point I thought we were looking at the second best meal we’ve ever had.

• Sea Bass with hot fennel mayo, chilled fennel soup, black olive, and sardines on sour dough - This was good but not at the mouth-explosion level of everything that preceded it. Just a decent fish dish. It was then that we realised that too many of the dishes were aniseedy via fennel or celeriac. You’d be in serious trouble with the menu if you weren’t a fan. Wine was Arneis from Seghesio, 2004 from the Russian River Valley in the US. This was one of our favourites of the night. A real winner.

• Loin of Lamb with chickpeas, aubergine puree, tomato petals and buckler sorrel - This was a completely bizarre dish which didn’t work for either of us. A plate was placed in front of us covered in dabs of various purees and chickpeas. In a side-dish (!) was the lamb and jus. The purees really were not very nice at all and the lamb was overwhelmed by rosemary which was a terrible pity since it was succulent. However my first taste of sweetbreads was a real revelation and they were gorgeous. Wine was a Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Chateau Sansonnet 2001 which was sadly badly masked by the food.

• Selection of cheese and crackers - All of them good and I liked the fact that we both got a different selection with a different jam/chutney in the middle. Wine was Madiran Chateau Montus 2003 from South West France. Another perfect matching with the food.

• Raspberries with almond milk, raspberry jelly and almond biscuit - Nice dessert but pretty forgettable and the block of frozen parfait(?) was just icy . Wine was Montbazillac Chateau Tireuil la Graviere 2001 from South West France. As I said earlier, I hate sweet wine but this really did suit the dessert well.

• Passion fruit with coconut cream, mango puree, marmalade with warm caramel and passion fruit jelly - Another very tasty but not memorable or special dessert. The wine was Riesling Vom Bunten Shiefer from Hans Lang in Germany, 2003. I loved this one too and will be seeking out some good Riesling from now on.

As I said, overall the food was to a very high standard and the wines were excellent. But both was diminished badly by the completely cack-handed front of house. There were multiple problems:

• I have no idea who the Maitre d’ was. Was it the small blonde wine guy who disappeared once we got our order in? Or the tall woman who came over to our table towards the end when Catherine was in the loo, folded her napkin and walked away without a word? Or some invisible third party?

• In Petrus we knew exactly who was in charge and he came over several times, not to ask some bland “did you enjoy your meal?” but to engage and converse. Thinking about Mint after the meal, the strong sense I got was a lack of confidence from everyone front-of-house and so a complete lack of proper engagement with their customers.

• Our wine glasses spent a lot of time empty. I’ve listed a large number of wines above but at one point the only thing left on the table was two napkins and two glasses of water. Again at this price level, I expect to be permanently topped up, not penny pinched.

• When I say I don’t want bread twice in a row, stop bloody coming back! What was it, 5 times? 6 times?

• Don’t tell me we have to be out by 9pm when you know you don’t have a full set of bookings for 9pm, when you don’t serve our last course until 9.15 and when you leave us 10-15 minutes between a few of the courses without even wine in our glasses. And all of this in a non-full restaurant.

• Absolutely no acknowledgment was made of the fact that it was my 40th birthday despite them being told so. In Jacob’s on the Mall last year, I got a special dessert and the Maitre d’ had a wee chat. In Petrus for our anniversary, we got a tour of the kitchen and met the amazing Marcus Wearing. On other occasions I’ve got a complementary cocktail. Here? Nothing! Not even Happy Bloody Birthday.

• When we left, there was no-one racing to open the door, ask us how the meal was or wish us on our way. We just snuck away in the night.

• They couldn’t even handle the fact that the meal was supposed to be paid-for as a gift. We were getting into the cab when one of the waiters (or maybe the Maitre d’, who knows?) ran out and grabbed us, apologised profusely since they had just realised who we were and said that they’d cancel our credit card charge. We told him not to bother as we’d sort it out ourselves. He was insistent but we were doubly so. There was clearly no-one running the booking system all night; no-one in proper charge; no-one who had scanned everything before service to see if there was anything unusual to warn the staff about. Amateur hour to be honest.

I’m not going to say the price of the meal, you can work it out yourself. But when you are paying that kind of money, having coffee and petit fours as an extra at over €6 is just plain scabby. The big shock on the bill was a mandatory 12.5% service charge. Let’s be blunt here, the service didn’t warrant it. 6% max, maybe. And if it’s mandatory then just put it in the price of the meal. Otherwise, why not separately call out the pastry charge, the loo roll charge and the dishwashing charge?

My gut tells me that, sadly, Mint will not survive. Dylan is clearly a talented chef but he’s not a restaurateur based on the front of house shambles we encountered. In a restaurant with a mix of two-tops and four-tops, none of the four-tops seemed to be occupied on a Saturday night. The prices are frankly ridiculous for a pokey little place with inexperienced staff. The blatant gouging via extras and service charges tells me they are in trouble.

We realised we could have flown to London, eaten in one of 200 better restaurants there, stayed the night and flown home the following day for less than Mint cost with its dazzling views of Spar. In a weakening economy, places like this which don’t deliver value (at whatever the price level) are the first to go to the wall. In a strange twist of timing and history, could we be seeing a re-run of Peacock Alley?

Having said alllllll of the above, we are so glad we gave it a go, so grateful to my parents for arranging and paying for it and so glad to have had a great meal.

The advertising for this programme had me hating its subject before it had even started. It depicted Dylan McGrath, who runs Mint restaurant in Dublin, as an obnoxious Ramsay-knockoff desperate to win a Michelin star. Two minutes into the show I wanted to turn it off. I had no interest in seeing this pompous, arrogant jumped-up little asshole.

Then the rent-a-critics and old men were put to one side and Dylan was allowed to speak. The scales fell from my eyes and I saw a driven, brilliant, witty creator at work. A Ramsay knock-off? You bet - everything that is right about Gordon, I saw in this young guy. Relentless work ethic, constant striving for perfection, inability to suffer fools and a desire to make magical food.

The show focused on his seeming need to win a Michelin star and kept showing clips of other chefs advising him to be patient, build a good business, lose the obsession, stop being so cocky. After a while they got very boring indeed. As Dylan said “this is Ireland after all”. I was thrilled to see the programme-makers really dig into his motivations, demons and formative experiences as a chef. His quips about collecting gooseberries with his Granny spiked the usual nonsense about where a great chef comes from.

His food is highly stylised and for a short while I was reminded of the infamous Conrad Gallagher. I was surprised the naysayers didn’t mention his name in fact. But the thing that struck me about the plates they showed was that they seemed unique and they looked gorgeous. The trip to his salad guy in the UK was a joy. Two obsessives discussing baby salad leaves in the shape of butterflies. Dylan mentioned that the guy had gone bust a few times. You could see why.

And then the highlight of the programme. After little more than a year and a half running Mint, he got his star. A lesser programme would have cut to scenes of the old bluffers looking bashful and apologetic. They didn’t need to, the message came across loud and clear; this guy is going to be huge.

Please please please RTE, make more programmes like this. The desires I expressed in my last review were all fulfilled by this show. Please tell me why it’s only a once off. I guess it is costly to make deep, incisive, educational, moving television. So dump the fluff and make more of these. Now, where’s the telephone number for Mint……

This is less of a review and more of a vote of support. Last week Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall kicked off a campaign to get people eating Free Range Chicken. He did this through a series of compelling programmes comparing intensively raised chicken production with Free Range.

Because no-one would let him film in a “normal” chicken production unit, he was forced to build his own. He split it down the middle with half as free range and half as intensive. Watching the differences become more and more apparent as the birds grew was a real eye-opener for me. Whilst we mainly buy free range, I had started to become dubious about the differences when I saw the same producer names on both types. But after watching this, I’m a total convert.

Quite simply, the methods used to intensively rear chicken are disgusting. If you want to eat meat that has been sitting in its own shit for its entire 39 day life, go right ahead but apart from any issues of animal welfare, if you want to see where Bird Flu will make the leap to humans in Europe, that’s where it’ll be.

Hugh’s campaign to get shops and restaurants in Axminster using free range were reasonably successful even in Tesco and the local kebab shop. His efforts with a local working-class community  to rear their own birds, whilst laudable, teetered on the brink of condescending. However the emotional scenes during slaughter did drive home the reality of where your meat comes from.

I’d love to know how many people who eat frankenstein chicken also support a ban on fois gras. I know which one I have a much bigger problem with.

I did think the focus on whole birds was mis-directed. Most people only eat a full bird once a week. My feeling is that the bulk of chicken sold is skinless chicken breasts and ready-meals. This obsession with breast meat should be tackled too since it addresses the issue of cost head on. We have 1KG of free range drumsticks sitting in the fridge. They cost €4.99 and will give us a fabulous meal when we roast them up in the oven with some spicy coatings.

One thing that interests me hugely is the numbers angle for a company like Tesco. Looking at it as a simple punter, surely pushing higher margin products like free-range benefits the bottom line? Whilst in the 70’s and 80’s when everyone was broke, price wars on a loaf of bread could cause people to change supermarket, is that really the case nowadays? I find it bizarre that somewhere like Tesco Wilton will be jammed with “Value” chicken plus a few exorbitant organic ones whilst being out of stock of free range constantly. Increasing demand for free-range will increase supply and drive down cost and hopefully make the Frankenstein Chicken just a short term historical aberration.

I was a bit shocked to see the Tesco manger in Hugh’s programme using a green-screen VDU. I assumed all their real-time analytics would be in multiple large screen dashboards showing exactly what was happening where in the shop. Maybe that’s why Wilton rarely has free range?

There is surely a huge PR coup to be had by the first supermarket which goes 100% free range on chicken and eggs whilst using the “animal welfare and customer health” advertising angle?

If you can catch the repeats of this, please do. If not, at the very least sign up for the Chicken Out campaign and if you have a blog, add the badge to it like I have done.

We all know to expect snooty service in Paris but I’ve rarely found that and have enjoyed most meals that I’ve had there. So I was a bit gobsmacked by the Jean Marie Le Pen supporters running Buddha Bar in Paris.

The “evening” unfolded like this.

1. We’re at Le Web 3 conference in Paris and we want to get some food. We also want to do so near the NetVibes party later on Rue de Rivoli
2. Tariq Krim says that it isn’t a good area for food but Buddha Bar is ok.
3. Four of us take the tube over, arrive into Buddha Bar and I ask if they have a table for 8 people (the expected number)
4. Stormtrooper behind desk snaps “have you a reservation”. No, sorry, we don’t.
5. Stormtrooper snaps “for how many?”. We say 8.
6. Stormtrooper snaps “how many here now”. Emmm, only 4.
7. Stormtrooper snaps “well come back when there are 8″. Oh ok.
8. We go to the Bar. Then the beer rip-off story happens.
9. Three people cancel on us, so we are now 5 and we go back to desk
10. Stormtrooper snaps “yes?”. Emmm, we’d like a table for 5.
11. Stormtrooper snaps “have you a reservation”. We were just here 15 minutes ago.
12. Stormtrooper snaps “how many here now”. Emmm, 5.
13. Stormtrooper picks up walkie-talkie and shouts into it. Someone shouts back.
14.  Stormtrooper snaps “follow that woman” and turns away from us
15. Stormtrooper II shouts into Walkie talkie and points down the stairs
16. We descend and encounter Stormtrooper III shouting into a walkie talkie
17. She brings us to a table
18. That’s it. We never received any other service from them
19. After 40 minutes without menus, water, bread or anyone to flag down, we walked out.

If I’d had a few drinks on me I’d probably have found it hilarious but as it was actually the worst non-dining experience of my life. You’d be better off in McDonalds.

We walked up Rue de Rivoli and found a nice pub bistro doing steak, frites and wine. A decent solid meal. I only wish I’d written the name of it down.