Paradise on the Western Road

One thing which is always made abundantly clear when you are writing a Vegetarian's Guide to Ireland is the utter originality of Café Paradiso, Denis Cotter and Bridget Healy's unique restaurant in Cork city.

Café Paradiso is unlike any other restaurant in Ireland, a place of such pioneering innovation that it stands sui generis. It seems crazy to describe CP as a "vegetarian restaurant", because Denis Cotter's cooking exists in its own sphere, and that sphere is a million miles removed from anything that anyone else does in these islands.

A dish such as fresh noodles in a ginger broth with stirfried pak choy, cauliflower, eggroll, scallions, coriander and aduki-bean wontons shows just how far-out Cotter's thinking is, yet if the cooking is avant garde, it is radical without being any way self-conscious. Like other great modernists such as Myrtle Allen, Denis Cotter shows the iron logic and discipline that is needed to be both modern and original. With his first cookery book already recognised as one of the pivotal chef's books, Cotter is already at work on a new book. Poor man: the only competition he has is himself.

Café Paradiso, 16 Lancaster Quay, Western Road, Cork, Co Cork Tel: (021) 277939 www.cafeparadiso.ie

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