Great grazing

THERE IS A sizzle of steak, Jamie Oliver’s courgette fritters have been fried, and the men are making the most of a boys’ night in. “Happy grazing,” someone shouts over the cooking sounds as I head out the door.

I’m off to dinner with a vegetarian who doesn’t like goats’ cheese. It’s a lonely calling in a barren wilderness of menu options. If they’re not slapping goats’ cheese on it, they’re trying to put meat in it. In France, she has been inexplicably offered rabbit; in Spain, there have been omelettes with “just a sprinkling” of jamon.

The lentil and nut brigade is often viewed as a tribe without a fully-rounded passion for food. Foodies, it is said, must be red in tooth and claw. It’s a cliche that Denis Cotter has taken a blowtorch to in his Cork restaurant, Café Paradiso. But it is perpetuated by the dismal veggie offerings too often found at the bottom of many menus.

Tonight, for the joy of having a whole menu of vegetarian choices, we’re going to Cornucopia on Dublin’s Wicklow Street. Opened in 1986, it has recently extended its dining room and its opening hours.

The booking policy here is quirky. You ring up to book a table, are told politely that you can have one, but they don’t need your name. A reserved sign will be put on a table for you and when you arrive you may sit at any of the reserved tables.

The new room is jazzier than you might expect, proving that not everything vegetarian has to be sludge-coloured and utilitarian. A guitarist is quietly playing background music. There are no free tables free there, so I sit down in the old part, facing the door, and watch the steady flow of customers coming and going.

The menu is on a chalkboard above the service area and this is where the restaurant feeling ends. The restaurant is self-service, with dishes are displayed in canteen-style hot cabinets. You queue up with an inexplicably small tray, and you get your dinner served by friendly staff behind the counter.

The goats’ cheese phobe chooses a tofu and rice cake with a satay sauce, with side orders of coleslaw and a beetroot and carrot salad (€12.95). I go for the white bean casserole with a pasta salad and beetroot salad (€11.95). My heart sinks a little when I see it comes with brown rice. I grab a freshly baked cheese and courgette scone, just in case. We have a glass each of the house organic white wine (€5.25 each).

We have small mountains of food on our plates. Back at our varnished pine table it’s time to test the substance behind this artlessly presented food. The friend’s rice and tofu cake is delicious. The spicy satay sauce is the colour of wet cement, but spooned over a tangy cucumber topping, it makes for a great flavour combination. The coleslaw is the real deal, homemade in a way that convenience-counter coleslaw never is. Goatphobe holds up a stalk of crunchy white cabbage the length of a biro. “That’s hardcore vegetarian,” we agree.

My casserole comes in another unlovely brown colour, but it’s hearty and tasty, with chunks of celery, carrots and aubergine cooked with the beans and fresh parsley. It’s obvious that shiny, fresh vegetables went into this, not kitchen leftovers mouldering into old age.

The real surprise is the brown rice. It’s nutty and nice in a way that, a few days later, prompts me to buy my first bag of brown rice in years to cook at home.

Another trip to the counter for desserts, a coffee (€2) and a pot of camomile tea (€2). My raspberry dessert (€4.95) is the only slight let down. It’s layered with synthetic-tasting cream in a wine glass, à la 1970s gourmet magazines. The raspberry layer is silty. However, the chocolate tart (€4.95) makes up for it, as it’s wonderful. “Now that doesn’t taste earnest,” is the remark from across the table. I abandon my dessert and help her out.

The cafe has a stylishly-designed cookbook – Cornucopia at Home – that customers can’t thumb through as it’s displayed, Book of Kells-style, a page at a time behind a pane of perspex.

It has been an enjoyable evening. The lack of restaurant trimmings makes for a relaxed atmosphere and it’s obviously keeping prices low. We both agree meat-eating spouses or friends might feel short-changed to be brought here on a night out. But Cornucopia is an institution, not an outreach programme. It’s feeding the converted and feeding them well.

Dinner for two with two glasses of house white wine came to €51.25.