A superb, thoroughly unexpected, restaurant in West Cork. Above, the view from the garden at Dede at the Customs House.
When we arrived in the small seaside village of Baltimore in south-west Ireland, I followed local advice and parked our car at the first available opportunity. As in every town and village in this beautiful part of the world, the streets are narrow and parking spaces very limited, especially in sunny late July.
As we walked along the short main street towards the harbour, JR commented, ‘I imagine a Michelin star means even more in a remote town such as this’.
The first building we encountered was the former, suitably forbidding, Customs House. For the past three years it has been home to Chef Ahmet Dede’s principal restaurant, Dede, and is today the recipient of not just one but two Michelin stars. Less than 100 yards further on was his second restaurant, Baba’de, which opened earlier this year and serves a more relaxed, less complicated version of his Turkish cooking. How soon, I wondered, before the town is referred to as Dedetown?
We continued down the main road to a view which I hope will never change. There was the bright blue Atlantic with boats of all sizes, ferries to the famous Fastnet Lighthouse and plenty of fishermen. There was no shortage of food and drink possibilities, too, but after a while we headed back to Dede.
The entrance to the Customs House, with wine bottles everywhere, is dark and slightly gloomy, with no hint of the pleasures that lie in store. But towards the end of the passageway and the garden space at the rear, sunlight revealed a smiling Dede standing in front of an open kitchen. He’s seen below talking to two Turkish diners who were there at the same time as us.
The space in the back yard has been carefully thought out. There were half a dozen tables smartly laid up with a transparent, thick plastic roof over most of these tables and walls that were rather mesmerisingly Irish (see the main picture above). In the far corner was a single-storey modern building that during our lunch became quite the focal point for the chefs and was obviously a prep kitchen, which I later learned had had to be craned in. We were shown to a table that was to be our home for the next three hours
No sooner had we sat down than the general manager and sommelier Jacques Savary de Beauregard reminded us that we had last met when he was working at Porte Noire in King’s Cross close to our flat in London. He explained briefly what would follow and, most importantly, that we would be given a menu at the end. He left JR with a carefully chosen wine list from which she would choose a Seaweed Margarita followed by a glass each of Orthogneiss from Muscadet producer Domaine de l’Écu and Mee Godard’s delicious (according to her) Morgon Corcelette. I was the designated driver.
Lunch seemed to pass in a flash, helped no doubt by the blue sky and white clouds in the distance. And it may also have been because we had recently been in Türkiye and could connect very easily with this style of food (see Eating out in Istanbul and Cappadocia). But the menu could just as easily serve as an introduction to top Turkish cooking for anyone. The food was exceptional.
We began with the five unusually complex amuse-bouches shown above that hinted at the varied and well-judged spicing that was to be a leitmotif of the meal. Each was extremely well executed. This was followed by a small piece of meat in buffalo milk and a small bowl of yoghurt soup all of which was enhanced by a round Turkish brioche, served with irresistible spiced red pepper and dried tomato ‘butters’ that had sweetness and charm encased in it and would prove extremely difficult not to finish immediately.
The next course, minutely described by the waiting staff, was an extremely pretty rendition of small pieces of fish topped with tomatoes and edible flowers.
Then to the highlight of the meal, a highly complex combination of John Dory and a rendition of a risotto. The fish was presented as a square, its top deeply browned, sitting on a pool of sauce and topped with flowers: this was delicious in its own right. Next to it came a bowl of yellow and green: the yellow was the risotto, topped with a lobster ‘bisque’ while the green came from peas with the crunch provided by the pea shoots. This was fabulous.
There then followed a lamb dish and a combination of strawberries, vanilla, olive oil and purple basil, all on the thinnest pastry (see below). I finished with a cup of Turkish coffee, Turkish delight and pistachio kunefe, an Arabic dessert of pistachio, cheese and attar, and a very reasonable bill of €254.50. (Lunch is €100 per person while the dinner menu is €180 per person with even more courses!)
How Dede, born in Ankara, came to cook an inspired menu more than 4,000 kilometres west of his birthplace in this historic building is a fascinating tale. He came to Ireland to further his culinary career before becoming the head chef at The Mews in Baltimore, where he won his first star in 2018. That restaurant’s closure coincided somewhat fortuitously with the purchase of what was then the dilapidated Customs House by Maria Archer, a Dubliner who had moved to Baltimore to live with her sailing-mad partner. The building had once housed a restaurant and is now very well established.
When I asked Dede about his team, he responded categorically, ‘I have no problem with recruitment at the moment. All the chefs working in both kitchens are from Türkiye. It is a long process – it takes six months from when we apply – but the system works extremely efficiently. Nine months before I opened Baba’de I recruited, applied and all the chefs came over. It was relatively easy and straightforward.’
‘What has made a huge difference’, he continued, ‘has been the creation of the prep kitchen which has relieved a great deal of pressure on the chefs. The amount of mis en place – of food that is prepared and is then ready for the chefs to cook and serve – is amazing with two different restaurants and two completely different menus.’
Dede is not only a hugely talented chef but also an extremely determined and dedicated individual who is not yet 40. The flavours we enjoyed were similar to those we had encountered in Türkiye but the textures and combinations were much more artful and creative. They were also completely different from those we encountered during the rest of our week in Ireland. After our lunch, we also discovered from our friend Umay Çeviker that negotiations are under way to bring several of the wines made at his Yaban Kolektif winery to Baltimore, which will only strengthen the authenticity of this unlikely Turkish culinary outpost.
Dede and his partner have one daughter and another child expected soon. This, plus the challenges of two restaurants, is quite a lot. ‘But I am fit and healthy and I have the right business partners’, he told me, ‘and one day I would like to open a hotel here.’ I, for one, would not bet against him.
Dede at the Customs House Baltimore, West Cork, P81 K291 Ireland; tel: +353 (0)28 48248
Baba’de The Mews, Baltimore, West Cork, P81 TC64 Ireland; tel: +353 (0)28 48112