Cafe Paradiso is the most aptly named restaurant in Ireland.

It takes you to a world of fresh food cooked with care and expertise. It introduces your taste buds to stimulating flavours and your eyes to natural colours of bright greens , reds and orange.

Using a base such as haloumi or coucous, the dish is built up with beluga lentils or surrounded with chick peas

Hazelnut gougeres were divine as nutty starters – balls of delicate flavour to mop up the delicious sauce.

Lyndas buffalo mozzarella was delicate and refreshing with a clear taste. We both admitted to having thought buffalo referred to the size of the cheese,not the fact that it actually came from real buffalos near Macroom County Cork. Lynda never thought that there had of course to be female buffalo!

We loved the delicious thin crackers with seeds in top that were placed in the middle of the table. The waitress kindly jotted down the recipe and we will both produce our version and see who produces the better cracker.

The service was excellent and the restaurant was full from 5.45 pm.

Great value.  €102 between us including the bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

We finished the night in the Bodhran on Oliver Plunkett Street – which we were informed by a barman in the Imperial is “the best street in Europe”. Who were we to argue? There are not many pubs in this country where you would walk in to hear Lou Reed followed by a mix of classic tracks from Blondie to , of course, Rory Gallagher

Nothing like a good dose of nostalgia!!

Cafe Paradiso certainly was not something that would have succeeded when I was growing up in Cork

its surely a sign of our growing appreciation of good foods and sustainability that it has such a huge reputation in Ireland and abroad .

As the big healthy man himself said- I’ll be back!