A €15 lobster, served on the pier, minutes from where it was caught, with French radio in the background. Is this Brittany? No, try Schull, writes CATHERINE CLEARY
I AM EATING WITH my fingers like my 15-month-old, just short of using the heel of my hand to get every morsel into my mouth. I winkle out a sliver of lobster flesh from a claw. It’s pink and delicious and shaped like a Spitting Image puppet of Gérard Depardieu. This is a no-frills food factory. Luckily, this is the kind of food that doesn’t need frills. It’s Ireland’s best fish and chip shop.
We are in L’Escale in Law-Library-On-Sea, otherwise known as the west Cork village of Schull in high summer. Everyone knows this place as the Fish Shop, because that’s what it is for 10 months of the year.
Like the visitors to Schull wearing Helly Hansen and pressed blue jeans, this fish and chipper is a summer phenomenon. It is open only in July and August and run with an iron fist by fish exporter Xavier Legris, who seems to enjoy his reputation as a cranky and very French Frenchman, although he has lived here for 22 years.
The cafe is a Norman conquest of the pier, complete with excitable French radio. It’s that family camping holiday when you were 14, a memory bubble of bad pop, gangly yearning and fried food that tasted like nothing you could get at home.
Behind the blue awnings, the back-of-house operation is the Normandy Ireland fish factory, which processes and ships Atlantic fish and seafood to Continental dinner tables. Some 12 years ago, Legris decided to open a temporary takeaway. It was a simple idea, dropping just-caught fish into fryers and serving it to hungry hordes of sun-scorched sailors and landlubbers.
The cafe is as utilitarian as the harbour is storybook pretty. There are tables on a concrete slab surrounded by a pavilion that breaks the sea breeze. The wobbly plastic windows make it easy to imagine how it feels to be shrink-wrapped.
This is fast food where the speed is between the sea and the tray. My lobster crawled into a pot not too far from where we are sitting, had its claws clamped before being boiled, cooled and slapped on a silver plastic plate in the shape of a fish. It’s that simple. And without the fish factory, it couldn’t be done at these prices.
A whole lobster costs €15. “Yes, €15,” a woman at the next table says to someone on the phone. It is a sign of a good meal that you phone a friend to tell them about it before you’ve left the premises.
Holiday food has a low bar. A self-catering family holiday can feel like a transfer of labour to a scenic location, with added sand on the floor. Not having to wipe up afterwards should not be a reason to eat bad food. But it routinely shifts articulated lorry loads of twice-fried once frozen food into the mouths of beach-hungry holidaymakers.
The difference here is the freshness of the raw ingredients. Chips are made from scratch; fried onion rings are made from large meaty Spanish onions chopped by the factory workers who become restaurant staff for these few weeks.
I am with my band of sand monkeys, three boys and their dad. And they love this place, too. The eldest has his first taste of lobster. He likes it. The middle guy is not so keen on the lobster, but eats his margherita pizza with pineapple (€8) with gusto. The youngest has a bit of everything. Their dad has fish and chips (€9.50), which are excellent, the last chip tasting as good as the first. The previous day he sampled delicious scampi served on a stick for lunch. A bottle of Château du Saut du Loup Muscadet (€12.50) is as robust as the rough-hewn picnic table we sit at, but nicely chilled. The boys’ drinks, two juice boxes and a can of 7Up, cost €4.20.
Desserts are a family-sized strawberry melba for €6.50, a candyfloss for €2 and a €2.50 espresso. Next time we will wander up town to Gwen’s Chocolates for take-out treats. It’s a window-licking good emporium (also French-run) of home-made chocolates, jellies, sweets, cakes and ice-creams.
But tonight the candyfloss is the colour of my son’s fleece, a bright blue tumbleweed of sugar on a stick. His grin at being allowed to eat it is almost wider than his face. This, and the bike ride home by the ocean, is a sandbag memory that I will use to ward off the damp seep of a November day.
Dinner for five with wine, drinks and coffee comes to €72.70.
