Cent’ Anni, Durrus, West Cork
Pizza to the rescue of a West Cork Village
Everyone has fun in Cent’ Anni.
Come 5 o’clock in the late afternoon and you won’t get a parking space on the little main street of Durrus village in West Cork, as the restaurant’s fan club arrive to get their table or get their takeaway from the restaurant.
The air is an olfactory tease, scented with pizza essence: the maillard sweetness of crisping pizza base; that deep note you know straight away is sautéed garlic; the fizz of tomato; the succulence of ragu.
Everyone is here, from the Standing Committee of the local Durrus Mothers of Seven Group, to a table of what looks suspiciously like five members of the McKenna family getting stuck into the special of Kleftiko pizza.
Cent’ Anni draws them in from far and wide on the West Cork peninsulas. There are blow-ins from Schull on the Mizen Peninsula, and travellers who have come all the way from Adrigole and Glengarriff on the Beara Peninsula.
Durrus sits at the head of the Sheep’s Head peninsula, sandwiched between the others, so it’s the ideal place to attract a local audience. We have lived here for almost thirty five years, seeing the village ebb and flow, as the west Cork villages tend to do.
Thirty five years ago, Schull was the food epicentre of west Cork. Today, Ballydehob occupies that role, whilst also occupying the role of Coolest Place on the Planet.
Durrus has always been the shy cousin, a hamlet that used to have five pubs – it now has two – and once had three shops – it now has one. When our local post office closed recently, after service dating back to the establishment of the State, it felt like a bit of a bruising. Post Offices aren’t what they used to be – there is no more Pension Day, no more Dole day – but they are a pivotal social glue in remote areas. Durrus seemed to be coming unstuck.
Chris and Emma have provided the glue the village needs. Cent’ Anni is always jammers, from the moment the doors open at 5pm on Wednesday this modest “pizza place” – as they call it – is feeding all comers.
When they opened in late 2023, they opened with a bang, the planned soft opening quickly turning into a massive street party. The pedal has been to the metal ever since, yet Chris and Emma and their team, led by their daughter Annika, cope with the daily avalanche with a smile and assured service. Everyone is having fun.
Chris and Emma are archetypal West Corkers, she hailing from London, he from Koln. Chris began his pizza baking journey during Covid, cooking out in a garden room for his family and their friends. His secret is that he still cooks in the same way: he makes what he likes, and he likes to have fun whilst making it.
On a recent visit, the special was that Kleftiko pizza. Now, kleftiko is a Greek dish where lamb or fish is traditionally cooked in paper – it’s sometimes referred to as “stolen lamb.” By rights, it doesn’t belong on a pizza. And, of course, as a pizza topping the lamb and oregano is Heaven sent, with the sort of how-come-no-one-thought-of-this-before? culinary logic.
It’s a beaut, and typical of what makes Cent’ Anni: you can have the straight-ahead stuff – the Puttanesca; the Corleone; the Cassaro – or you can take a wander to the wild side, and order the white lasagne, or the prawns with jalapeno pizza, or the fine Pizza Mexicana with chilli con carne and more of those lovely jalapenos. The adventurous and the cautious are all catered for, all looked after.
There are bounteous desserts for those who can manage something sweet after an avalanche of carbs – Bailey’s tiramisu; baked vanilla cheesecake; Eton Mess – and good wines sourced from Cork’s Bubble Brothers.
Cent’ Anni is the social glue that Durrus village needs. Like other rural stars, it holds the centre in zones where population decline and the loss of retail outlets and national services can leave villages looking – and feeling – bereft.
Businesses like Cent’ Anni deserve to be Government-sponsored, because they provide an essential social service: they can rescue a village. Durrus owes Cent’ Anni a great debt, and everyone on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula knows it.
