Strasbourg Goose

Having done a bit of shopping in Cork, European city of Culture of 2007, we stumbled upon the Strasbourg Goose. Only two minutes earlier I had claimed not to be hungry, however, faced with the specials menu I suddenly found a wee space.

We were greeted by a well intentioned if slightly confused waitress who added rather than detracted from the cafe ambience of the place. The Strasbourg Goose is the kind of place you walk into thinking “this is either going to be really good or really bad”. Thankfully for us it was the former. We ordered the fresh lemon sole stuffed with crabmeat and the rigatoni with crab. Perhaps they had an unexpected bumper catch of crab… The house white, which we had originally ordered by the glass and ended up being upgraded to a bottle, was a real seafood match, lucky for us.

The lemon sole was perfectly cooked and absolutely bursting with crabmeat. Being used to London-sized portions it was a real find. The crabmeat rigatoni was oily, nutty and followed by a tangy Parmesan kick.

The cafe had a proper pudding stand, which was straining under the load of sticky toffee pavlova (which was cracked and fabulous-looking), strawberry cheesecake, Victoria sponge and saving the best till last, a dense alcohol-laced, spongy-looking Tiramisu. If it weren’t for the fact that we had money on the next horse race, we definitely would have had to indulge. Being the greedy tourists that we are, we thought to ask when they closed and were absolutely astonished to find this gem is open until 12 midnight. This is the kind of thing you dream of in supposed 24 hour London…

Reviewer: Tara O’Reilly

Strasbourg Goose, 17-18 French Church Street, Cork, Ireland. Tel: +353 21 427 9534