A beef patty? This brisket burger felt more like having to eat a mop-head

ISO wanted to like The Spitjack. I had been following it on Twitter from long before it opened a few weeks back and it seemed like such a good idea – to base a restaurant on what is essentially a kind of grill. Ideas were conjured up of simple cooking with an aroma of smoke, a kind of informal but delicious way with food that let the raw materials do the talking.

And the meat has to be good because, according to the menu, much of it comes from O’Mahony’s in the English Market, Cork city’s best and most innovative butchers. The trouble is what’s done to it.

Dinner, no doubt, would give a broader sense of what the place is about but I decided to go there for lunch. Lunch is often a reflection of where the core of a restaurant lies and I think this may have been the case. It was busy, the service was friendly and highly efficient and the menu… well, the menu read somewhat oddly but not in an off-putting way.

We decided to start with croquettes of chicken – which seemed a slightly odd thing to have in a rotisserie restaurant – and they were fine. It struck me, however, that this perennial dish within the Spanish tapas repertoire might have been better made with ham. However, no complaints.

Our porchetta, from O’Mahony’s I suspect, came as a surprise on several levels. This rolled pork joint, lavishly seasoned, is a great Italian favourite and I was expecting it in the Italian manner, quite thinly cut and served in, if you like, drifts or waves of wafer-thin slices.

Unfortunately not. It was a single slice, a little more than half an inch thick with crackling on the outside that ranged from crunchy to chewy. While this was a disappointment, what took the biscotti, so to speak, were the accompanying vegetables: batons of carrot, beetroot and possibly celeriac. January vegetables in July? How on earth did that happen?

The only greenery came in the form of a little Caesar salad which was decent enough.

Then came the brisket burger. This looked like a hamburger, browned on the outside but it comprised pulled beef, long strands fashioned into a patty. It felt like I was eating a mop-head. And, as a coup de grace it had that distinctive, somewhat greasy taste of reheated beef – something that can’t be avoided if you’re going to create a dish like this. But why would anyone want to?

It’s clear that they make their own chips at The Spitjack and that’s commendable. However, it’s essential to choose a variety that goes crisp and stays that way. Not all are equal. On the day, the chips were limp, flaccid, the antithesis of what a chip should be.

At the pudding stage we had a deconstructed banoffee pie in a jar, and a chocolate brownie. Adequate but where’s the imagination?

These are wallpaper desserts, you get them everywhere.

To be fair, they were not charged for because one of the owners asked for feedback and we were frank about the meal. These are good people, trying to do a good job but they need to get a few things straightened out.

Whoever thought that serving root veg at the height of summer was a good idea perhaps needs to rethink. And whoever thought the brisket burger was edible might think of doing something sensible, like accountancy.

And while I realise that Cork is a very conservative city as far as food is concerned – I have no idea why, but just compare it to Galway – I think a few boundaries could be pushed. Why not offer strawberries and cream? Or summer pudding?

The Spitjack could be good but my feeling is that it needs a lot of work and – most importantly – a better understanding of food and the seasons.

Without the desserts or coffee our meal, with two glasses of wine and some mineral water, came to €55.80.