A worried look came over a friend when he finished telling me about The Courthouse restaurant, as if he wanted to bite the words back. Unleash a critic on his home place and it could go either way. She might look down her snooty urban nose at it. She might not get its charms.
But it’s okay. I’ve long been charmed by market towns in border counties. Childhood visits to a house over a draper’s shop in a market town are the stuff of my fondest memories. There were exotic things about town life for a culchie like me: the sounds of people and cars going by at night, Molly’s sweetshop in skipping distance, ginger and rhubarb jam in my grandmother’s kitchen.
The Courthouse Restaurant sits at the top of Carrickmacross's wide market street in Co Monaghan. It's at the handsome end of the town. A half-finished breeze-block apartment complex is at the other end. The restaurant is in a house beside the town's courthouse and is run by chef patron Conor Mee and his partner Charlotte Carr.
Like countries and their weakest citizens, you can tell a lot about a restaurant by how it treats its vegetables. The preparation of carrots and cabbages has typically been pegged at barely a notch above wash-up, one of the lowliest kitchen jobs. The result is vegetables that are unloved and unlovely. Not here. First they are served deftly pickled in a ham hock and crispy egg starter that kicks off Sunday lunch in this old stone building.
There are some seats downstairs but the main restaurant is upstairs under a vaulted ceiling of old and made-to-look-old timbers. The bare stone walls and dark furniture give it a cellar feeling. Deep-set windows look down the length of the main street.
And it turns out you don’t need to be nostalgic about market towns to like this restaurant. Liam has a seafood croquette starter, two small balls of breaded seafood: prawns and crab with mashed potato and a great horseradish coleslaw. My pickled beets, gold and purple, have ribbons of carrots, also lightly pickled, lying on top of liver-pink ham shank which has been boiled (I’m guessing) and teamed with the piquant sweetness of these vegetables to counteract its juicy saltiness. The egg is a little more Scotch than liquid-crispy, but good nonetheless.
The chorizo chopped finely in the other main dish adds a hint of smoke to wonderfully cooked lentils. My husband is no lentil fan but these were good enough to convert him. Chunks of chicken decorated with a great garlic aioli are draped over the smoky lentils. I get a volcanically hot cast-iron pan of gratin potatoes in a butter lake. The golden, butter-drenched slices are topped with shards of fried rabbit meat, which looks like a slightly richer chicken, and flecks of flat-leaf parsley. Raw green peppercorns are sprinkled in for little bursts of fresh heat. And there are more lovely vegetables: nothing too fancy, just thumb-sized chunks of carrots that have been finished in an oven to a sweet, chewy consistency and triangles of yellow swede, also boiled and then roasted (I think) to bring out their store of sunny sweetness. And there are more spuds.
As this is a family meal we’ve also tried the children’s options, two plates of minute steak, two pieces of meat as good as any served to grown-ups in many restaurants. There are chips the size of a baby’s arm and a healthy serving of nicely cooked peas. Yes, I know it’s not hard to cook peas but you’d be amazed at how badly it can be done. The youngest gets a large bowl of penne Bolognese, which is not as richly tomato-based as I would have liked, but he has no complaints.
It’s one of the desserts that sparks the strongest memory of my childhood – a crème brûlée dish filled with a smooth, sweet serving of rice pudding. Three vivid pink pieces of champagne rhubarb lie on top and it’s been grilled just slightly. I almost ignore the bowl of ice cream that comes with it, assuming it to be vanilla. It’s not. It’s ginger to go with the rhubarb, like the delicious dance partners they are.
When I ask if the ice cream is house-made, they say of course, just like everything else and that’s why they have a Bib Gourmande. The final magic is the bill. Three courses are €25, which knocks spots off most urban restaurant experiences.
Lunch for five with one glass of house wine came to €76.65.
The Courthouse Restaurant, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan
tel: 042-9692848
Verdict: 8/10 The jury of five was unanimously pleased
Facilities: Good
Food provenance: Cheesemakers are named-checked.
Wheelchair access: Yes
Music: Lovely jazz standards
Vegetarian options: Two starters but no mains on the Sunday lunch menu
