16 February 2022
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Goldie, Cork city’s sustainable fish restaurant on Oliver Plunkett Street, has retained its highly coveted Michelin Bib Gourmand for the second year. The restaurant, which continues to grow in popularity, entered the Guide for the first time at last year’s awards.
Since then, Goldie’s talented young chef-owner, Aishling Moore, and her team have hit their stride. The food is inventive and assured, and, while Moore uses only local fish she takes her inspiration from all over the world to build her daily changing menu. Dishes like Monk cheek scampi, Taiwanese fish nuggets, handmade prawn cocktail crisps and crunchy fish spines imbibe the menu with a keen sense of fun and provide an easy entrée for diners into a mostly fish menu which has serious style.
“We are absolutely thrilled with the news” says Moore. “This recognition is really encouraging for the whole team as we gear up to normal trading conditions. It reaffirms our commitment to sustainability and to serving delicious, accessible seafood in a lovely, relaxed and casual environment in Cork’s city centre.”
The restaurant’s ‘whole catch’ approach, which provides fishermen with a guarantee of income (and no discarded fish), in turn means that it is up to Moore to create a new menu every day depending on what catch is delivered to her kitchen. This, in addition to the restaurant’s ethos of gill to fin cooking, demands maximum flexibility and creativity from the whole team both in and out of the kitchen. “Using most of the fish from gill to fin was a challenge for all of us to start off with, but now I can say we are thriving on the opportunities it provides us to change things up on a regular basis” says Moore.
The practice of foraging, preserving, pickling is also central to the ethos of the restaurant and the shoreline of Ballycotton Bay provides the kitchen with much of its bounty. “Finding ways to preserve seafood other than freezing has been very important, as the weather effects our base ingredient availability every week” adds Moore. Other premium local producers showcased in the restaurant include Rossmore Oysters, Hive Mind honey, Churchfield Community Gardens and Singing Frog Gardens to name but a few.
Encouraging the next generation to embrace fish in their diets is also on the menu at Goldie, and young diners eat free on the first Wednesday of every month.
