The chocolate and raspberry tart! Last time we mentioned the baked cheesecake prepared in the Café at the End of the Shop. This time, it has to be the chocolate and raspberry tart. Perfect beyond belief, the tart showed why these ingredients belong together, and yet it took their natural affinities even higher, into a perfect synthesis that defined what great cooking is.
So, don't just think that Wendy Whelan runs a great shop – which she does, a place where everything is covetable, where everything has been chosen because it fits so well with everything else. But Mrs Whelan also runs a café that is a superb exemplar of the Ballymaloe ethos: simple food, cooked with lovin' care, served with grace and an utter lack of pretension, a place to enjoy quiet moments of perfection.
