When did it happen that the fine old words of catering – monger, patissier, confectioner – got replaced with words like ambient, part-baked or food service? Thank goodness some sense prevails in institutions like Mortell’s of Limerick, but I’m finding it difficult to think of another café anywhere that, if you order a ham sandwich, they give you their own baked ham, their own coleslaw – made with their own mayonnaise, on their own home baked soft white yeast loaf. Can you imagine how delicious that tastes?
Everything you eat in Mags and Brian’s restaurant comes into the restaurant as a raw product, and, thanks to their team which includes an in-house confectioner (when did you last hear that phrase?) Ger Lee, who makes their breads, their puff pastry, their tart doughs, their biscuits, everything is cooked deliciously into simple, but great food.
Going back to that ham sandwich. When you order it, Mags, who knows most of her customers by name, will slice the ham in front of you, just before placing it in the sandwich. “They watch us” she says of the customers observing this slicing process, “some like it thick, some like it thin, we need to get it right for them.”
Brian is the same with the fish that he cooks from the station set up in the middle of the restaurant. First you choose your fish, and only then is it cooked in front of you. And the fish is as fresh as you’ll get anywhere in the country, that’s assured by the fact that the owner is fifth generation in the business, his father, grand father, great grandfather and great great grandfather were all fishmongers, selling from this premises. So you can’t get better assurance of quality than that.
Mortell’s is, quite simply, a precious gem, and should be better known. Ballymaloe Cookery School is the only place I can think of that would go to so much trouble to make absolutely everything they serve from scratch (and they take it further, they even make the butter). Mortell’s is wonderful, it deserves our respect, and already has won our hearts.
Sally McKenna
