The Oak Room

Four of us dined here on a Tuesday night (doesn’t open Mondays) it’s a town centre location. We were relaxing in the nearby Radisson Blu spa hotel. Taxi each way 12 euro. The three course menu was 28.50 euro a head. This menu is on their website. It appears to be the regular selection — a fixed menu — signature dishes as they say these days. Also there was an extensive and impressive selection of specials on the blackboard to augment this regular menu; this is a good way to extend the menu selection and prevent regular diners from becoming tired of the same old, same old. There was a full bar and good wine menu. My starter and main course were chosen from the daily specials, two of us took the same choices. My starter of perfectly cooked lemon sole goujons, mini salad and curry mayo dip was very tasty. The duck wantons and Thai style fish cakes starters were declared as just lovely, and all the dips were praised as good on strong flavour. My sole main (could have been sea bass, I don’t remember as I ate out 9 days in a row — anyway it was very good, the potato mash was generously laced with fresh dill and the veg was perfectly cooked. I enjoyed it all, with a few glasses of icy chablis (24 euro bottle) and a pint of cold Heineken on the side. Again the others declared their respective sole, duck and fillet steak mains as excellent (the fillet with the trimmings & pepper sauce was 27 euro) but it didn’t come medium rare as required, it just crossed the border toward medium to well, and this didn’t stop it being greedily devoured accompanied with a pint of Heineken. Each main included a choice of mash, chips (just chips, not triple cooked, not a great chipping potato and the chips went limp after a short while, so i suggest a re-​think is needed here), a salad or cooked veg. The cooked veg consisted of the trinity of Irish veg; carrot, broccoli and cauliflower. This selection has become boring to us, as we dine out so often, even when properly cooked as here, but I suppose its popular. Sadly there was only room for one dessert between two — the baked Alaska was a must as it is a rare treat — not often seen on menus, takes me back to the 1970’s: it was sweet, the meringue outer shell was just browned, giving flavour and just crisp overall a delightful decent light portion. There was only one front of house very busy young waitress — she was run off her feet — but always cheery, willing to please helped contribute to the great atmosphere that was there and competent too. We didn’t feel that we waited to long for the food or drinks either. The waitress also kindly phoned the taxi driver who gave me his card on the way in from the hotel as our night here came to an end. The taxi was there within minutes, just as I like it. Cavan town was busy for a weekday night — a gentle breeze wafted along Main Street as we boarded our taxi back to the hotel. The five stars reflects the overall experience and the good value, value which now reflects the post Celtic Tiger era when eating — out prices became not just profoundly stupid but positively off — putting, like for example 17 euro for cod and chips in a café in Donegal town just a few years ago.