Restaurant Review: Max’s, Kinsale, Co Cork
On a weekday anyway.
That, at various stages in his utterly bizarre life, Dali kept an anteater as a pet and, at another time an ocelot he called Babou, one he brought nearly everywhere on a leash, usually wearing a diamond-studded collar, suggests that the painter knew how to make an impact in even the most urbane, jaded setting.
Art historians are less divided than they once were about the long-term value of his work and whether it represents substance or bling gone salvaje. But then it is reasonable to expect a degree of public eccentricity from a man who could not visit his wife Gala — 20 years his senior — in Castell de Púbol in Girona, the castle he bought for her, unless he received a written invitation to do so, lest he interrupt the pleasures she, well into her 80s, enjoyed with an impressive litany of lovers.
Even the most tanned residents of Kinsale might shy away from that template for domestic happiness — but you’d never know. Answers on a postcard please.
Nevertheless, some of them, like scores of others in more or less any small town, know how to stand out from the crowd in far more conventional ways. And in a small, tourist-dependent town like Kinsale, with something around 60 places to eat, that can be pretty hard for a restaurant, especially as so many of them are so very good.
Max’s seafood restaurant, run by owners Anne Marie Queva and her husband Frenchman Olivier since 1999, rise to the challenge wonderfully. Their Main Street restaurant compares very well with the very best the town has to offer and outshines most by a good margin.
Once again we — CW was my guest — had to settle for a relatively late table at 8.30pm suggesting that there may be something of a long-awaited lift in the restaurant business, even if only at weekends.
CW opened with scallops, three succulent balls of pure sea-taste, each with a different sauce. What a splendid way to put the taste buds on alert. They were that lovely combination of firmness and flavour, substantial but ephemeral which, to me at least, seems one of the worthwhile objectives of all good cooks.
My starter, an indulgent half lobster and the last one in the house, was, even if not related to Salvador’s companion while he waited for a to-arms note from Gala, a lovely reminder of what an indulgence is. Tasty, rich and so much of the sea that you’d nearly surf across the dining room, around the tables and up the stairs in celebration. An entirely justified reaction to this particular dead crab.
Our main courses continued in that vein. CW chose turbot and what a beautifully cooked piece of fresh fish it was. I had brill, several little discs, crispy-but-soft flesh full of taste. Both dishes were set off by splendidly subtle but enhancing sauces, rich and creamy. Purr, purr. More, more.
Desserts, so often an afterthought, were good too, mine a simple thing of good ice cream, almond flakes and raspberry compote, CW’s a sticky toffee pud and even if she did not celebrate it wildly she ate it all.
The wine — a Spanish white Louro Godella — was a new one to me but I suspect, and intend that, our paths will cross again.
Dali, back in the day when a radio was an extra in a car, developed a reputation for witticisms, little argots of multi-layered wisdom but many of them just seem crass in today’s post-crash sobriety. One though fits the bill perfectly as a sign off on Max’s lovely restaurant: “There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction” — I might choose a different verb but only because death seems a Daliesque overreaction to even the finest meal. I’d risk it though.
Three courses for two with a bottle wine — €37 — two small glasses of dessert wine and coffees came to €148.40.
Open seven nights from 6pm until end of August.
8½/10
8/10
7/10
8/10
7/10