Carping about ‘Michelin Star dining’ includes regular accusations of ‘price gouging’, ‘pretentiousness’, and, that old stalwart, ‘the emperor’s new clothes’, the latter often employed by those who’ve never even seen the emperor in the first place to be able to make a suitably qualified judgement on the nature of said emperor’s attire or lack of same — in other words, they haven’t actually dined at a Michelin Star restaurant.
Without giving them an entirely free pass, Michelin Star restaurants are where you generally tend to find the most talented chefs of all, those culinary necromancers with the ability to divine the finest expressions of texture and flavour from premium produce, and at a certain point, many of them move well north of food as mere sustenance and into the realms of entertainment and even, debatably, art.
Absolutely, it can be very expensive, prohibitively so for many, sometimes extraordinary prices even seeming an obscenity in a world where one billion go hungry every day.
But then again, I know a fella who paid €1,400 for a Rugby World Cup final ticket, gambling Ireland would go all the way and that’s for just 80 minutes of watching someone else play a game you could watch for nothing on TV.
In a Michelin-starred restaurant, for a fraction of that price, you actually get to join in and play ‘the game’ yourself.
Actually, if I had the wherewithal, I would also probably pony up for a nosebleed-priced ticket to see Ireland in a World Cup final but the point is we all put different values on different experiences and if food has been a defining part of your life, then you’ll be prepared to pay more to experience the very best.
For the past five years, Ichigo Ichie has been one of the very best and most original restaurants in Ireland.
However, consider this as much a public service announcement as a review because if you want to experience the current incarnation, you’d better look lively for Japanese chef Takashi Miyazaki’s Ichigo Ichie which earned a prestigious Michelin Star — in 2018 — closes on December 23, to reopen next year as a substantially different type of restaurant: Ichigo Ichie Bistro & Natural Wine, a far more casual and cheaper offering with dishes more reflective of the street food of his first Cork restaurant, the ever-popular Miyazaki, a root and branch change to the current formula which will inevitably mean sayonara to the star.
So, the Four Foleys of the Apocalypse have assembled for a very special ‘Christmas Party’, my three bould comrades all experiencing the unique Ichigo atmosphere for the first time, as much hushed zen temple as a restaurant, all anticipating the ceremonial traditional kaiseki menu as we might a public performance.
A ‘snack’ arrives, native Irish shrimp, deep fried to be eaten entirely, head, shell, and all; the simplicity of this bolshie morsel floods the palate with saline umami, almost an advance emissary from next year’s menu.
Then the show begins, too many dishes to cover in full. The first ‘act’, ‘Hassun’, a selection of morsels, translates as ‘a little bit of everything’. Pistachio tofu (with beetroot miso, apple blossom, and gold leaf) is serene, a symphony of the nut’s flavour punctuated by sweet earthy beetroot and spiky apple.
Eye-catching gold leaf is one of those premium Michelin elements to vanish from the menu next year — no harm, it is one of the few tropes of fine dining that lends justifiable credence to accusations of elitist frivolity.
A wafer-thin shaving of Skeaghanore duck conveys adequately the heft of fine flavour, amplified with red wine, soy sauce, and brassica mustard, as a chorus line of allium angels — scallion, hay, leek — dances across the top.
Foie gras, miso, apple, and smoked daikon on a rice wafer is sublime, and luxuriant, yet not excessive, even if foie gras will be another exile next year.
Of all the dishes that might most comfortably migrate to the coming casual menu, deep-fried Rossmore oyster with puffed rice and nitsume tare, a sweet/salty sauce, is a definite keeper, impossibly addictive, with all the filthy allure of the finest street food, a delightful irreverence in otherwise demure company.
It keeps coming. Tender scallop. Exquisite toothsome Lough Neagh eel. A selection of superb sashimi highlights Miyazaki’s mercurial curing and ageing of premium raw fish, concentrating flavour, rendering texture into a near-buttery cream.
Lamb loin, sweet bread, pinecone features Achill Island lamb and St Tola goat cheese, a rollicking expression of two of Miyazaki’s favourite Irish ingredients while Asari tontoro chawanmushi, an egg dashi pot, with Connemara surf clam, Gubbeen guanciale, is the edible equivalent of a miraculous medal, inexplicably comforting to true believers.
Maitake mushrooms are meaty, nemekos are pickled bon-bons. It all ends with Gubbeen Smoked Cheese Cake, a mildly sweetened coda leaving us in that very perfect place, fully sated yet not remotely stuffed.
The star may no longer shine come 2024, but I suspect the hospitable glow from Ichigo Ichie 2.0 will be large enough to illuminate galaxies, and a whole new audience trooping in for the first of many more meals to come.
- Food: 9
- Wines: 9.5
- Service: 8
- Value: 9
- Atmosphere: 8.5