A glitch meant that Martin Shanahan’s “Fishy Fishy Cookbook” was out of print for a few months so, once that was sorted and I had new copies, I drove over to Kinsale to bring some to Mr Shanahan.
I arrived at 3.50 pm and walked in the restaurant. It was a Tuesday afternoon. The place was packed.
Now, hang on. Who eats at ten minutes to four in the late afternoon on a Tuesday in the month of May? Every other serious restaurant in Ireland will have been empty on that Tuesday afternoon, yet Fishy Fishy was jammers. How does Martin Shanahan do it?
(Before I try to answer that question, Full Disclosure: my wife and I published FF Cookbook and I played a part in its production. Reader, I was the invisible guy who held the scrim – the light deflector – whilst we were doing the photographic shoot. My work went uncredited and unpaid, though not unthanked. And you should see how toned my upper arms are, how Michelle-like they became, thanks to hours spent holding a hoop of bendy plastic up in the air).
Fishy Fishy was packed at 3.50pm on a Tuesday in May for two reasons.
Firstly, it isn’t just a restaurant. FF is an Archetype. As you drive down the hill into Kinsale and see the water and the masts, a thought rears unbidden in your head: wouldn’t it be nice to find some fresh fish or shellfish and some cool white wine in a nice room?
You could call it the Mediterranean Coast Complex.
FF answers that archetypal need. It satisfies that complex.
Secondly, FF works because of what we now call The Restaurant Zeitgeist.
The RZ works like this: I don’t know exactly what I what to eat and drink, but what I do know is that whatever I want to eat and drink I want to eat and drink in the most happening room in the town. So, tell me who is the keeper of The Restaurant Zeitgeist?
And so, whether it is waiting three hours in the street to eat at Mission Chinese in New York, or getting a table in NOMA or Fade Street Social, everybody just wants to be in the best room, the most happening space.
And Fishy Fishy is that place, that space, in Kinsale.
Of course, as a customer you don’t see what makes FF work, which is actually the extraordinary supply chain Martin Shanahan has created, which sees fish and shellfish coming straight from the local boats into his kitchen, and onto your plate.
And, as the recipes in the book reveal, Mr Shanahan then simply focuses on maximising the flavour by fashioning companionable, finger-licking food matchings for the fish – the potato and chorizo with mackerel; the champ with poached hake; the Asian slaw with pollock fishcakes.
Beautiful food, in the best room in town.
Buy the Book here http://www.guides.ie/books
