You learn a few things on a road trip to Limerick. Pat Kenny’s talking on the radio to a scientist about the mantis shrimp which can see 12 kinds of light. Humans see three.
It makes me feel for the mantis’s cousins, tiny dried shrimp sprinkled over my lunch, who plainly didn’t spot the net. They’ve ended up as mermaid’s confetti, papery crackles of shrimpiness under tooth. Only their tiny black eyes stand out as pinpricks of pigment.
An email from a colleague prompted the visit to Aroi Artisan Street Food on Limerick’s O’Connell Street. She stumbled across the place and went to sleep that night thinking about her lunch.
I’m with my Dad. Our last father-daughter roadtrip almost ended accidentally in Limerick. Today’s combative approach to the GPS had us nearly overshooting the city. We’ve walked straight past the place and ended up at the Hunt Museum. Mantis shrimp we ain’t. But finally we wash up here in the corner building that looks, in our defence, like a coffee chain outlet from outside.
The interior is a mix of scandi driftwood meets 1950s ice cream parlour, with a takeaway section at the front. The name, which rhymes with ahoy, means tasty or delicious in an unspecified Asian language according to the menu. It’s a small printed wipe-clean menu, but it has me stumped. Because I want to order everything.
The most expensive dishes are €10. At these prices the textbook formula for westernised Asian food is heat and sweet, fire and jam, spread over protein, carbs and greens. But there’s a whole other spectrum of flavours happening here.
My Som Tam salad, garnished with those dried shrimp, is made from unripe papaya, shredded into a cabbage-like ingredient, vaguely pickled in a tamarind and chilli dressing and interlaced with tomatoes, coriander leaves, toasted peanuts, shards of red chilli slices and the shrimp. If I was in charge I’d lose the cherry tomatoes but it’s a mouth party of flavour and texture.
There’s a plate of calamari, fried thick chunks of squid in a nutty breadcrumb coating, dressed with a black squid ink sauce. A satay chicken side plate has gorgeous coconut in its sauce which has been added to the dish after the chicken was fried on skewers.
Faced with all the choice I do an unmerciful dither and chose the chargrilled duck, thick chunks of meat on a bed of wilted pak choi, green beans and a soupy tamarind sauce. It’s fine but a little unexciting compared to everything else.
The dish of the trip is the chargrilled fish of the day. A wedge of hake wrapped in banana leaves and then cooked in a yolk-yellow sauce sounds like standard issue. But it’s got fiery fresh Thai basil leaves on top and a silken sauce that has more layers of flavour than Limerick has had bad press.
Later the gloriously named chef Eddie Ong Chok Fong, tours the restaurant and I get to the bottom of that fish sauce. “Do you think you’ve been spotted?” my Dad asks. I don’t. Every table gets a chat.
The sauce takes 12 hours, the chef says. It’s made with lime leaves, sambal oelek or a red chilli paste and wild ginger, not the roundish galangal ginger root, but one that looks like fingers. He gets it shipped in from London.
Fong’s career has taken him round the world cooking in hotel kitchens in Toronto, Melbourne and Singapore. Here you get the impression he’s cooking food that’s closest to his heart. I’m not sure if it’s artisan or even particularly street-foodish, but Aroi is a gem hidden in plain sight, if you know what you’re looking for.
Lunch for two with two glasses of Chardonnay and a cinnamon and mint tea came to €57.
Aroi Artisan Street Food, 1 O'Connell St, Limerick, tel: 061-311411.
The verdict: 8/10 Delightful Asian flavours in a cheap and cheerful setting.
Facilities: Joss stick scented
Music: Wipe clean pop
Food provenance: None
Wheelchair access: Yes
