Eating out:I've been offered various disguises since a letter appeared in this newspaper suggesting that my reviews suffer from what you might call the recognition factor.
Wigs are not much use, as I have a great deal of hair, and I don't fancy nose putty much. One reader, who obviously knows me well, suggested that if I just smartened up a bit then everybody would be taken in.
There are a few points to make about the recognition factor.
Firstly, so many Irish people regard working in restaurants as being beneath their dignity that vast numbers of waiting staff these days are from overseas and so, understandably, hazy on local detail.
Secondly, how come so many restaurants manage to produce such utter garbage when they know, it would appear, that a restaurant critic is sitting at one of their tables? If a kitchen can't cut the mustard, then a critic's sudden appearance will make no difference. Service, on the other hand, can be tweaked, and egos massaged, but seasoned campaigners know to keep a close eye on nearby tables and see how they fare.
Oddly enough, most of your e-mails tend to agree with my reports. Only about 10 per cent write to complain that their experience was vastly different from mine - and some of those are in response to negative reviews.
Actually, I'm very impressed with the readership of The Irish Times. The restaurant critic of a British newspaper tells me that about half of readers' e-mails appeared to come from people who needed to be detained for their own safety and that of the community. Only about 2 per cent of mine are from the spectacularly unhinged, which may well be a record. (May I mention, in passing, that I lost a bunch of e-mails recently, so my non-reply is not rudeness, just technical incompetence?)
On one occasion I was accosted in a restaurant by a large, loud woman who berated me for being so absorbed in my meal that I hadn't even glanced around to gauge what was happening at other tables. Through gritted teeth I pointed out that I was having a night off.
While I'm at it I might as well record that I don't use my name for bookings, I never go to restaurant openings, I always pay the bill and I never hang around with restaurateurs.
Anyway, neither a booking nor a disguise was required when I dropped into the Blue Geranium Cafe, near Bandon, on a very wet Wednesday recently. It's got plenty of space, and I know the chef, Debbie Shaw, from her sojourn at the late lamented Barça, in Lismore. I didn't need to keep an eye on other tables, because this is a self-service establishment.
The cafe is part of the expanded Hosfords Garden Centre, on the N71 from Bandon to Clonakilty and points west. Hosfords is a legend in Munster and among geranium enthusiasts nationwide. It has the biggest range of seeds I've ever seen, and it's one of the few places you can buy big tubs of fish, blood and bone fertiliser, if you're so inclined.
The cafe does excellent salads, open sandwiches and several savoury tarts during the week, but it pushes the boat out farther at weekends, when there's entertainment for the children and lots of local foods.
I had a bowl of very dark, thick mushroom soup, subtly flavoured with thyme. It was clearly made from properly ripe and open flat-caps, and it had a home-made concentration and meaty substance. It came with good brown and white soda bread.
Then came the savoury tart, this time a big slice supported by buttery, crumbly pastry and filled with roast peppers (which were certainly not out of a tin), little slices of fried chorizo and masses of creamy, tangy Ardsallagh, the goat's cheese made by Jane Murphy near Carrigtwohill, on the other side of Cork. Other versions available included spinach and Ummera smoked salmon.
There was a lovely salad of chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, parsley, onion and the odd toasted hazelnut, sharpened with a zingy lemon dressing, and one of little carrot strands tossed with pumpkin seeds and a light vinaigrette. Baby roast potatoes made an altogether less successful salad, but full marks for trying.
With a small bottle of mineral water - and the requisite determination to eschew the seductive strawberry shortcake tart and other fine examples of home baking - the bill for this exceptionally tasty and healthy lunch came to €14.95.
Why can't more cafes be like this? With real food prepared freshly on the premises, the kind of food that you would want to eat at home? Why is the average cafe a monument to industrial catering and processed, chemically-produced, debased food?
The Blue Geranium is an example of what can be done when you have someone in the kitchen who cares. And I can think of few more attractive combinations than good grub and lots of plants that you can buy.
The Blue Geranium, Hosfords Geranium & Garden Centre, Cappa, Enniskeane, Co Cork, 023-39159, www.hosfordsgardencentre.ie