Have you ever really thought about what goes into the plate of food that is brought to your table in a restaurant? If you think about it, a large proportion of it comes down to the chef. It all starts at the back door of the restaurant, where products are unloaded every morning. Depending on the time of the year, chefs experiment, create, and make menus that are fresh, exciting, and appealing to customers all year round. Strawberries and fresh salad greens have come and gone, game and autumnal fruits are featuring now. If you do not have a good chef, then you do not have a good restaurant.
The Gallery Cafe in Gort has a great chef. The plates come from the kitchen loaded with love, enthusiasm, and most importantly, good food.
Born and raised in Poland, chef Pawel Karnafel was always fascinated by the culinary arts. After completing a degree in environmental engineering he decided to move to Ireland and indulge his passion for food. He may be Polish, but his pedigree is one hundred per cent Galway. GMIT trained, he served his time with the good and the great of Galway's food heroes. He began working in the West Restaurant at the Twelve Hotel in Barna, and honed his art in the much-missed Sheridans at The Docks, at Ballynahinch Castle, and Cava Restaurant. But a passionate chef needs his own kitchen and so I found myself sitting down to lunch in a place I used to spend a lot of time trying to get out of — Gort.
The Gallery Cafe room itself is beautiful. Quirky wallpaper, standard lamps, loads of kitsch, and an enormous chandelier are all on display. Seating is casual and relaxed.
We ordered an apple, carrot, and ginger juice for €4. It was fresh pressed, delicious and foamy, though maybe a little on the expensive side I thought. Two juices arrived for the children which, for some reason, were not fresh from the juice bar but from a nasty carton. But the elder one fancied the foamy apple one, so I guess we have instilled some sense of taste in them. For their lunch they had a lovely pizza with a very crisp base and simple but tasty toppings which was rapidly hoovered up.
My current husband ordered the mackerel salad. This was a handsome piece of Burren Smoke House mackerel presented on a bed of new potato, gherkin, caper, and egg salad in a lemony mayonnaise. Topped off with colourful confit peppers, organic leaves, and served up with toasted brown bread, it was amazingly fresh, tasty, and more than delicious.
I am usually carnivorous in the extreme, my favourite foods being snouts, ears, and offal. I do, however, have a weakness for cheese and spotting a St Tola goat’s cheese dish on the menu, I ordered one of the sandwiches thinking I was being very boring. These are not sandwiches in the traditional sense of the word. This was a wonderful concoction of a sweet quince sauce, roasted cubes of celeriac, on a toasted white soda farl. The plentiful salad that came with it was excellent also.
There are many great options for vegetarians on the menu but the real genius is that you do not notice they are vegetarian to begin with. Most of the items were listed at about €8.50 which was very good value for the portion size and quality of the food. The style of service was relaxed and charming, in keeping with the room. We also noticed a side of chips on the menu, which I had to order as most of the other dining options in Gort are chip based. These were easily the best chips I have had all year. Gargantuan quarters of potato, going all the way from very crispy to very fluffy, with a homemade roasted tomato ketchup heavily laden with toasted fennel seeds. For this reason alone I will never bypass Gort again.
Pawel's style of cooking is an example of his passion for wild ingredients and the whole slow food ethos. His food philosophy is based on locally-sourced produce, from markets and farms. He forages for wild fruits, nuts, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, and seaweeds in the countryside and along the seashore. I was lucky enough to meet him at the Galway Food Festival where he ran a foraging workshop, and also at his pop-up restaurant, Nutmeg Feast, and look forward to seeing what he will come up with in the future. He is a man happy in his work, which translates directly to the plate and that is a lovely thing to see.
Details for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are at www.gallerycafe.ie or check Nutmeg Feast on Facebook for details of Pawel and his ‘partner in crime’ Yolanta's pop-up events, but do not expect much activity for a little while as their little 'babymeg' is due to make an appearance some time very soon.
