The Roundy

Castle St. , Cork City.

Travel, they say, broadens the mind – it certainly broadens one’s vocabulary, and a person doesn't have to travel far in this fair island to encounter many’s the mind-expanding aphorism.  For instance, popular is the Southwest, though by no means confined to this region – hoor.  In a literal sense, used to denote a lady who plies one of the oldest trades, generally at night, hoor is pressed into service in any number of colourful contexts (confusingly, a lady of that venerable though not often venerated profession is far more likely to be referred to as a ‘quare wan’).  For example, Cork is a hoor to drive in.  You have to cross that hoor of a river umpteen times, driving past the quare wans outside City Hall with cute Cork hoors cutting in and out of lanes in front of you.  It was a boiling hot day and I'm a hungry hoor at the best of times, so I was sweating like a hoor and in a hoor of a humour by the time I reached my destination on Castle St. in the city centre.

'Twas a hoor to drive in, even then!

My mental geography of Cork (though not quite so old as the maps pictured) extends far enough back to remember the Roundy in its previous incarnation as the Roundy House, the haunt of many’s the ancient beardy Fenian, the type of fella who might have fond memories of a good day out hunting in Béal na Bláth.  It is now an achingly cool Cork institution*, where you'd need to be wearing organic denims hand-stitched by Gauloise-smoking French-Canadian monkeys and a record bag stuffed with rare 12-inch recordings of Albanian trip-hop folk music to fit in.  Luckily, I had packed both for the expedition, and managed to slip in without raising suspicions.

The pub itself, both inside and out, is beautifully appointed.  The stonework of the curved interior wall is painted a crisp white, framing four enormous windows, each offering a different vista of the street beyond - an ideal people-watching venue.  A long green leather bench curves beneath, allowing for smaller, private gatherings or larger affairs alike.  The lush patterned wallpaper on the small area beside the bar sets off brass rails overhead of the bar-workers holding any conceivable configuration of cocktail glass.  Hanging glass balloons to house nightlights, wicker baskets holding trailing ivy plants hanging in every window, lovely map detail inset into every table, polished copper light fittings throughout - all these speak to a careful and judicious eye behind every detail in the pub.  During the Celtic Tiger, many pubs were guilty of throwing money at their walls in the hope that some of it stuck; in the Roundy, money was spent with class and discretion.

A Room with a View

Ou é mon tailor-monkey?

The Sandwich:

Now, a quandary.  If there is a Toasted Special on the menu, but the day's special is also a toasted sandwich, which special is the most special?  I could have lost half the day to existential angst, but for the fact that they were out of Toasted Specials, it being three in the afternoon by the time I'd rocked up.  "The toasted sandwich that's on special, so," quoth I.

Now, I have begun to develop an understanding, as I research for this blog, that the standard ingredients of the traditional Toasted Special didn't come about by chance.  There is something about the interplay of those ingredients - the combination of the melted mellowness of cheese with the salt of the ham, the note of attitude added by the onion, the juxtaposition of textures and colours - that elevates a toastie, makes it, indeed, special.  But, like a folk song worn threadbare by too many late-night hackneyed pub renditions, we have become inured to it, our ears deaf, our eyes blind.  The great practitioners - the Luke Kellys, the Christie Moores (or the Long Valleys, the Lady Belles) - strip away previous incarnations; open our eyes to look afresh at what made this thing special in the first place.

The toasted sandwich that was on special contained chicken, peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese and red onion.  It was not a special sandwich.  Chicken doesn't respond well to toasting, and had become dried out and flavourless.  The cheese was a white cheddar variety, and quite plasticy in taste.  The bread was on the thin side, and flat toasted - no pleasing griddle-marks to tantalise the eye.  The inclusion of peppers helped things along a little, but the sun-dried toms were little more than a rumour.  I took to slathering the thing in mustard, and that improved the sandwich a little.  If that all sounds obnoxious, that wasn't actually the impression the sandwich actually created.  In fact, such a sandwich would never inflame that level of passion.  No; this sandwich, in appearance, in taste, was beige.

On the Stereo:

I was very surprised to actually recognise Jack Johnson on the stereo.  I would rarely be able to name the artists that would customarily grace the speakers of the Roundy.  It is usually unerringly cool, however, and well judged to suit the atmosphere in the pub.

On Tap:

A wide range of the weird and the wonderful here.  Meriting special mention are the bottles of Estrella, a gluten-free beer I was lately introduced to by a knave with a wheat intolerance.  Very quaffable, and no bloated "I've been drinking a rake of beer" feeling, though I'm not sure if gluten-free makes it coeliac friendly.  On draft there were a number of standouts:  Paulaner, Hoegaarden, Peroni, Fischer's and Pilsner Urquell lined up beside all the usual standards.  That's a fine selection, but as a minor grouse, I would like to see them take a punt on a local craft beer as well.  Nevertheless, in addition to a fine range of cocktails for lipsticked types, there's definitely ample scope for a pleasant night's hop hopping.

Also worth a mention (and they seem to be making a deal of it, judging by the promotional stuff at each table) is the range of teas offered via Gurman's.  So you can join the Taoiseach in his favourite tipple of Red Rooibos, or maybe join him in a more biblical sense by partaking of the Red Honeybush (ahem).

People-watching nirvana

The Verdict:

Let's face it - the Toasted Sandwich aficionado is not the market targeted by the Roundy.  Thence, the toasted sandwich is not something they do particularly well - it's adequate, but not excellent.  I guess it's more a ciabatta kind of crowd.  But what the Roundy does, it does exceedingly well.  It's a brilliant location for an afternoon people-watch over a couple of well-chosen beverages, and it is seriously cool in the evenings - in fact, a little bit too much work for an auld fella like me, more likely to put his hip out than to be hip going out.  Although your Fenian grandfather mightn't be happy - shure, 'twas far from gluten-free beers the Roundy was reared, and ne'er a bottle of porter to be had off the shelf no more, the hoors!

*Incidentally, I think great credit is due to both the Roundy and its sister institution further down Cornmarket St., the Bodega for the improvement and development of this quarter of Cork City.

The Long Valley

Winthrope St., Cork City

Sure Thing or Beaten Docket?

The Exterior

It is said that all gambling addicts have something in common, an ill-timed stroke of good luck that turned out to be ill-fortune - their first bet won.  They hit the jackpot, their horse came in, they were dealt a winning hand:  in whatever fashion, fate decreed that in their minds, the association would ever be made between the adrenaline rush of the wager and the endorphin payload of the winner.  Ever after, the gambler will seek to recreate that moment, to feel their stars once more align, certain each time that this is the winner to pay all, the start of that hot streak when Fortune will once again smile on her favourite.  I had my first toasted special in the Long Valley.

Don't get me wrong - I'd eaten toasted sandwiches before.  The eldest in our house would regularly pull out the toasted sandwich maker at home and fire all manner of leftovers between slices of bread buttered on both sides.  His imagination was limitless and undiscerning, his appetites voracious.  Coleslaw hotter than the surface of the sun would spew forth from the crimped and browbeaten slices, hiding an inferno of mustard, lasagne and God-knows what else within.  Inflicting third degree burns on your tongue and tastebuds with the first bite was often a blessing in disguise.  It was many years ago, against this backdrop of dismal experience that I was led, with low expectations and three sheets to the wind, through the doors of the Long Valley.  My friend, a proud son of the Southern capital, had a cunning plan to add some structure to our day's drinking with a toastie in the snug before decamping across the street to the Hi-Bi to begin the serious business of the night ahead.  I watched spellbound through the serving hatch as the behemoth Breville worked a marvellous alchemy on bread and ham at the other end of the bar.  The die had been cast for me, the Rubicon crossed - there was to be no turning back.

But memory is such a fickle mistress; could it be trusted here?  Was it brave or foolish to retrace the steps taken by my former self so many years before?  Could the half-dreamed, half-remembered fabric of recollection withstand the hard realism and rigour of review?  It was with these thoughts in my head that I wandered the streets of Cork, heart in mouth and rumble in stomach.  The geography of the city seemed to mirror my thoughts;  Cork's jumble of streets are not to be navigated by logic or reason, but by hunch and intuition.  Each turn of a street corner is a remembered revelation, a familiar surprise.  I am convinced that there is no fixed number of streets that link Patrick St. and Oliver Plunkett St., but that these thoroughfares are in a constant state of flux governed by forces unknowable.  Though the warm, humid sigh that the marsh beneath the city heaves up on such summers' days I made my way, only accepting that I must have wandered too far when I reached the English Market and must retrace my steps.  Until at last I arrived, ready to measure memory against reality.

Marble and Wood

The Long Valley, as perhaps the name would suggest, is a long, dark cave of a pub penetrating deep into the interior of one of the irregular blocks of buildings that delineates the city's geography.  The floor is a mix of ancient marble and parquet flooring, and the faint smell of furniture polish thickens the air and the sense of wood in the place.  A long leather bench runs the length of the wall down one side facing the bar.  The bar itself is long, and peopled with barstools that have every look of use rather than ornament to them.  In the mid-afternoon, a smattering of people had taken refuge from the day's sticky glare; some tea-drinkers like myself, some others making concerted headway though doubles and mixers.  The snug was occupied, but no further information could I hope to offer on its occupants.  The snug in the Long Valley has doors you could defend from an army, that could withstand bomb-blasts.  Once in situ, no earthly power other than that wielded by the skilled barman could hope to displace anyone resident within its confines.  In the corner of the main body of the bar, the television silently flickered out a doubles match from Wimbledon, the type of inconsequential first-week game that would only hold your attention if you had a long summer of doing nothing stretching before you.  Which, as it happens....

The Snug even repels cameras...

The Sandwich:

I approached the bar with trepidation.  First, I noticed the price chalked upon the menu board - €5.80.  My heart sank; could a humble toastie justify such a price-tag?  But then my eye settled upon the impossible - could it be true?  Could it still be here some fifteen years later?  Hunched in the corner like some ancient warrior from a Nordic saga, wisened and battle-hardened, sat the self-same Breville of years before.  My heart exulted, and I took my seat with the flutter of expectation in my chest.

The Beast - not since Knossos...

Branded delph - c'est trés fancy, mon frere!

My first question was answered in fairly short order.  How do you justify €5.80 for a toasted special?  By putting about €8.00 worth of ham into it!  A thick wedge of pig had been sandwiched between the bread, and ham of a quality that would legitimately drive a beardy fella from Ros na Run out into the middle of a field to declaim its merits.  And that was only the starting point.  The bread too was of superior quality, and a thicker than average slice.  This meant that the harsh heat of the Breville had seared the outer side to a pleasant crunch without drying the bread out completely.  Inside that, two thin layers of cheese had melted either side of the ham to the optimal gooey, stringy consistency.  In the background lingered just the right amount of red onion, and the bite of the English mustard supplied on the side which I slathered on two of the quarters gave a nice extra dimension for them as might want it.  The tomatoes deserve a special mention:  these were properly ripe, the type of ripe you can't usually find on shop shelves in Irish supermarkets, and delicious.  They had, I strongly suspect, like myself wandered down from the English Market earlier that day.  A Toasted Special of this quality is not accidental - it can't come about as an afterthought or as a product of happenstance.  Each ingredient here was of a considered excellence, and their proportion and combination a legacy of long years of trial and error, of tweaks and refinements.  It is little wonder that the young man I was all that time ago fell under its spell.  Here I am years later, world-weary and a confirmed cynic, and I am again bewitched.

On the Stereo:

Can it be co-incidence that after my long wander through the streets that 'Destination Anywhere' was on the stereo when I walked through the doors?  The Commitments soundtrack saw the beginning and the end of my visit, which was as good an accompaniment for a trip into the past as any.

On Tap:

Unfortunately, I was not free to partake of any alcoholic beverage, reliant as I was on the trusty Astra to ferry me away to East Cork afterwards.  Grand cup of tay, mind you.  All the usuals were on draft, with the worthy addition of Peroni and that Canadian beer that has yet to come under the glare of my reviewing faculties.  I do speak from a position of knowledge when I tell you that the pint of Murphy's in the Long Valley is about as good as you'll get anywhere.  And however good the first one is, by the third pint it's absolute nectar!

The Verdict:

The Long Valley's Toasted Sandwich is a thoroughbred.  It's Arkle, Dawn Run and Desert Orchid all rolled into one, the impossible made possible - a sure thing.  When one thinks about how many lives that Breville must have saved over its long and storied existence, it's enough to humble any man.  It's a pub where one can place the fickle unit of memory against the harsh yardstick of reality and find that it measures up.  And, heavens forbid, should the Zombie Apocalypse come to pass, the snug of the Long Valley would be the place to meet one's fate.  Even if those doors fail, at least one could die a happy man!

Speak 'friend' and enter.