Canteen, Limerick

Some places have the right feel to them. Take Canteen, for example. It's a shoebox of a restaurant in Limerick, run by Paul Williams, who opened it seven months ago. From the outside it looks like a shoebox. Inside, it looks like the inside of a shoebox. The design budget must have run – easy – into five figures: I would say €103.98. And it feels just terrific. It feels like a restaurant, despite the fact that it is barebones tiny and barebones bare. Of course, it helps to have Interpol playing on the stereo, and to have a small shelf of serious cookery books – hello Heston. The daytime menu features hot boxes with organic lamb meatballs, the lamb coming from the brilliant David Seymour of Tipperary's Sheepwalk Farm. There is a gobi vegetable curry, a Burren smoked mackerel salad with peas and walnuts, and there are salads and wraps. Today's special is a pulled pork wrap, the pork from Crowe's farm, so that is what I try. It is brilliant. In fact, it's the best wrap I have ever eaten. It is lush and satisfying, yet delivers a health hit as if it includes a tonic supplement. It comes on a tray, and is wrapped in foil, and there is a red napkin – who needs plates? If Mr Williams insisted on serving a wrap like this straight from the floor, you would still go to Canteen to eat it. That good. So, next time we are in Limerick, we will be in for breakfast – Crowe's Farm sausage and bacon on a Wild Onion Bakery bagel; Aztec's yogurt; Badger & Dodo coffee – and I would say the chances are that we will be back for lunch – smoky chilli chicken; roast beetroot and walnut salad; hot smoked Asian salmon. Mr William's and his team have concentrated all their energies on what counts – sourcing great food and cooking it with imagination and sympathy. That is why Canteen feels so right. Canteen, 30 Mallow Street, Limerick twitter.com/canteen