Cava

Cava
51 Lower Dominic Street, Galway City
Tel: 091 539 884
www.cavarestaurant.ie/ cavaspanishrestaurant.blogspot.com

Word of mouth and a host of gushing reviews drew me to Cava restaurant
on a recent tour west. The Galway restaurant, owned and run by chef JP
McMahon and his wife Drigín, serves excellent tapas and spanish
influenced food that adds a new culinary dimension to the city's long
standing links to the Iberian peninsula

Spanish cuisine has emerged from the shadow of its European bretheren
of late. With this bullish charge led by the mesmeric Ferrán Adria, of
El Bulli, a stampede of tapas style restaurants and menus have
followed on his coat-tails, each flying the flag with greater or
lesser authenticity. The scaled down portions and expanded choice of
tapas offer the perfect fuel for the cost conscious, attention deficit
appetites of the modern diner. Cava then is a restaurant very much of
and for its time.

The extensive menu reads like a tapas greatest hits with a B-side of
interesting and obscure regional dishes. Usual suspects of patatas
bravas and calamari sit alongside braised tongue, lambs heart and
kidneys in sherry and we were left to whittle down our choices over
warm bread and good oil. From a decently priced Spanish wine list we
chose two glasses of red, with the Rioja particulalry good, delivering
a flurry of red fruits that raced across the palette.

Potatoes with serrano ham and cherry tomatoes won plaudits from my
companion though I thought I picked up the acrid taste of burnt
garlic. Patatas bravas were served skin on, a little too rough and
ready for my taste, while Spanish tomato bread was simply toast,
cheese and tomato served pinchos style on a stick, but none the worse
for that. The grilled tomatoes were sweet and vibrant contrasting the
dense and unctious manchengo.

The rustic cooking continued with lamb heart, stuffed with pork and
chorizo. This was an ode to classic peaseant cooking, though let down
a little by arriving to the table lukewarm. The heart was slowly
cooked and kept remarkably tender, its visceral flavour abley matched
by the robust stuffing. A plate of cured tuna was simplicity itself,
the intensity if the opaque fishy slivers defused by sharp pickeld
cucumber.

At this point we were taken in an altogether different direction.
Where the previous dishes were rough around the edges, duck with plums
was a dish of poise and elegance that ate as well as it looked; the
duck cooked to the moment of medium rare perfection and the plums rich
and honeyed with just a little bite. It showcased not just the variety
of spanish cuisine but also the range that the kitchen was capable of.
For dessert, Creme Catalan was assuredly handled and daintily
presented. The accompanying biscotti were riotously good, baked
in-house with tantalising hints of orange peel and cinnamon.

I approached Cava with huge good will, and though it missed the mark
with one or two details, remain of that opinion. Cava owes nothing to
foody trends and everything to the knowledge and passion of its owners
for authentic, hearty spanish cooking. It proved the perfect choice of
venue to wile away an afternoon of conversation and reminisence,
punctuated by a steady procession of tasty tapas, brought as ready
from the kitchen. The length and breadth of the menu means that there
will be something for everyone's taste, and plenty left to come back
and try the next time.

We Loved: The extensive menu and obvious enthusiasm and passion of the
operation.

We Spent: €68 for two glasses of wine, seven tapas, one lemonade and a coffee.

This review appeared in Food and Wine Magazine