We first ate in Cork’s Goldie Restaurant in November 2019, having been fleetingly introduced to chef Aishling Moore at the annual Food on the Edge conference the previous month.
Two facts signalled that Goldie was something different. First, Aishling was espousing a fin-to-gill style of fish cookery with seafood sourced from day boats.
Secondly, she was all of 24 years old.
The gift of youthful talent means that you don’t have to doubt yourself. Moore had already established a reputation cooking across the street in Elbow Lane Smokehouse – we included the restaurant in the 2019 edition of the 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland – so the step-up to head chef at Goldie seemed logical. Just as importantly, Elbow Lane had shown that Moore was comfortable working in a kitchen where there actually wasn’t room enough to swing a cat.
The early Goldie menus were provocative: crunchy fish spines with togarashi; Goldie crumpet with seaweed butter; salt fish brandade with pickles; pan-fried pollock with sprouts and langoustine butter sauce; pan-fried ling with bok choy and café de Paris butter, a sauce that would become a Goldie signature.
For the first couple of months, Goldie was walk-ins only, which meant that getting a seat – especially one at the lovely bar behind which the crew worked their magic – felt like a blessing and a win at the Lotto. And it was clear that everyone who got a seat felt the same, which meant that Goldie was a joyful room, right from the off.
Almost seven years later, Goldie still feels the same: a joyful room, packed with happy punters who feel privileged to be here, because getting a seat in Goldie is still the biggest ask in Cork city.
Moore’s cooking may have seemed provocative, but it was also supremely logical, continuing a line established by the many wonderful female Head Chefs who defined the early days of Cork/Kerry cuisine. We see a particular connection with Maura Foley:
“The main reason The Purple Heather became a restaurant was as a result of a daily supply of fresh fish from a friend, Kevin Cooper, who had recently bought a trawler,” writes Maura Foley in her book, My Wild Atlantic Kitchen. “This was amazing produce and was the ultimate in freshness, direct from a small boat. It was such a treasure to be able to get fish of that quality.”
Foley’s words from the 1960’s are echoed by Myrtle Allen’s, in The Ballymaloe Cookbook: “The thing that matters most about fish is its freshness. The extreme urgency of getting fish from the sea to table is not properly appreciated.”
Well, Aishling Moore appreciates it, and Goldie menus are built around what has been brought in from the day boats, though the main course menus always offer a dish made with East Ferry chicken and a vegetarian choice alongside a trio of fish dishes. When Moore wrote her own book of recipes, Whole Catch, in 2024, she added her voice to what Foley and Allen had written:
“So we fried the tails in a buttermilk batter, salted the trim and emulsified it with potato and olive oil, smoked the roe, glazed the collars, picked the head meat, and battered the tongues and cheeks in buckwheat. These all became the stars of our menus, which change every day.”
It goes without saying, but it must be said: behind that daily-changing menu is a mountain of sheer hard work, the glazing, picking, pickling, battering, smoking, prepping, all the graft that is involved because “We wanted to commit to whatever was landed and use as much of that as possible, so we began serving crunchy fish spines, smoked fish collars, taramasalata and fish head terrines.”
This vividly improvised way of working is what sets Goldie apart, and it is what has won Aishling Moore both her devoted audience and pretty much every single culinary prize that you can be awarded in Ireland. In March 2025 Goldie made the Number 1 spot in The Sunday Times 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland.
Moore’s style and philosophy means that eating in Goldie feels a little like having a ringside seat as the very act of making a creative manifesto unfolds before you. You go back to Goldie because you have to know what Aish is up to, you need to know what new ideas she has brought back from her latest culinary trip, you have to see how she is evolving a dish, swapping ingredients, changing directions, amending, revising. All this, whilst all the while acting under the pressure of running a successful city centre restaurant where people have expectations of what they will want to eat.
So, in 2022 the house olives were marinated in bharat and sumac. In 2025 they were doused in blood orange and kosho, and in 2026 that kosho was paired with lemon. The house crisps might come with cultured cream, or maybe a Cuinneog buttermilk ranch dressing with a scatter of fennel oil. The crushed baby potatoes might be served with scallions and seaweed butter, though in recent times her thunderous colcannon, where the potatoes are crushed with green cabbage, or green cabbage and leek, has built its own fan base.
A fan base for colcannon? Goldie teaches you to expect the unexpected.
Whilst it is clear that Moore has a philosophy of cooking, it is also clear that she has a politics of cooking. She is prominent in the Irish branch of the Eurotoques movement of chefs, and her weekly recipe column in The Examiner is quietly political in the most subtle ways, steering people in new directions when it comes to deciding what to cook, offering ideas to soften the pressure of the domestic kitchen economy.
On a summery Saturday evening, with World Cup energy pulsing along Anglesea Street, we began with the amazing wild garlic and seaweed crisps, further annotated by some crisp shiso leaves, and the Taiwanese fish nuggets have never been a negotiable for us, or for anyone else coming to Goldie.
The hake tail schnitzel with soy cured egg yolk is by now one of the signature dishes – in breaded fish finger terms this is the GOAT – but it was almost overshadowed by a gherkin and celeriac remoulade so finessed that you gasp at how they managed to confect it. Pi bil monk cheek sope shows how confident the kitchen is with Mexican flavourings, the textures congratulated by sweet pickled red onion and a salsa verde made with tomatillos.
The house cafe de Paris butter was activated in the service of making some lush megrim taste even better than it looked, and pan-roast monkfish were three tender pillows of fish so freshly saline it might have swum onto the plate and into the centre of that apple katkut. Of course, we had the sea salt shoestring chips, and we finished with a West Cork special: Bushby’s Rosscarbery strawberries with Macroom ricotta pavlova – those egg whites from the soy cured egg have to earn their keep.
Goldie cooking is entirely its own thing, its own beautiful thing. We’ll be back.
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