Great Pizza in Kinsale Ireland?!

After our initial exploration of beautiful Kinsale Ireland with its harbor and historic structures, we decided that it was time to find somewhere for lunch…

After looking around a bit, we settled on Vista, a café/bistro on Pier Road right across from the marina.  This 2-story building includes that terrace on the second level and this casual restaurant serves breakfast, lunch or dinner. 

This is a partial view of the lower level at Vista Café/Bistro.  We didn’t check out the upper level where the Marina Lounge is located…  Based on what I read on their Facebook site, Vista also regularly features live music!   

Instead, since it was so nice out, we found a street side table overlooking the Kinsale Yacht Club and the action on Pier Road. (From the left: Laurie, Bonnie and Bill)  

If you’re into boating, the Kinsale Yacht Club can be researched at http://www.kyc.ie/index.cfm/page/aboutkyc.  Kinsale, with its beautiful well protected harbor and gourmet dining would be a fine port of call for anyone cruising along the Irish or United Kingdom coasts! 

Most of us ordered a local Blacks Brewery KPA Kinsale Pale Ale… (5.75E/$6.90 US) It was an excellent choice!

Black’s Brewery and Distillery was founded in 2013 by Sam and Maudeline Black.  They now produce a wide range of beers and ales as well as Black’s Irish Gin.   They must be doing something right!  Not only did we like this ale, on their website I noted the number of places serving or selling their products in Ireland…pretty impressive for an operation that is only 4 years old!  Check them out at https://www.blacksbrewery.com/.

This bowl of Marinated Olives was ordered for the table to share. (4.50E/$5.40 US) We noted that olives were frequently offered as appetizers on menus across Scotland and Ireland, something that we don’t see that frequently in the USA.

We also ordered the Breadbasket (3.75E/$4.50) really before we decided what to have for lunch.  Based on our luncheon, we certainly didn’t ‘need’ to have all this bread, but it was excellent and the basket was empty by the time we finished our meal.

As it turned out, we all ordered pizza!  There were 3 different versions ordered for the table.  This was the 9” Roma Pizza. (13.75E/$16.50 US) It was loaded with prosciutto ham, olives and mushrooms. 

This beauty was the 9” Quattro Formaggio Pizza. (13.75E/$16.50 US) This very fine pizza creation was loaded with a nice blend of mozzarella, cheddar, peorino and goat cheeses. 

FYI…I had to research peorino cheese as I’d never heard of it before.  It is apparently a cheese that is made from ewe’s milk combined with beer to give it a unique flavor.  So…the cheese on this pizza came from cows, goats and sheep! 

Hey!  What can I say?  I’m kind of a basic pizza guy and I had to try something that I could compare to a ‘standard’ pizza in the USA.  This was our 9” Pepperoni Pizza. (11.45E/$13.75 US)

First of all…we definitely ate too much food, especially with dinner yet to come!  Secondly, these pizzas were all excellent...and they seemed a lot larger than 9”!  The seasoning and toppings were top notch and the thin crust was firm and crisp…holding up well with the toppings.  We all agreed that the pizza at Vista Café/Bistro (and Pizza joint!) ranked right up there with some of the best pizzas we’ve had in St. Louis, Chicago, upper New York State and south Florida!  It was a winner!

For more information, Vista Café/Bistro can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/VistaBistro/.

If you’re hungry, just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for lunch!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave