Café Paradiso is an award-winning Irish restaurant located in Cork, County Cork. It specialises in vegetarian cuisine and the proprietor of this restaurant is the celebrity chef and television personality Denis Cotter. It has been featured in publications such as the Irish Independent, which suggested the restaurant as a place to dine if one had to spend forty-eight hours in the city. That publication has also expressed it surprise that Café Paradiso possesses a total of zero Michelin stars.
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Origin and style
Cotter opened his Café Paradiso restaurant in Cork in 1993. Café Paradiso is located at 16 Lancaster Quay in Cork. Its vegetarian style is connected to Cotter's overwhelming fear of cattle, which he overcame in the February 2008 RTÉ One television programme Guerrilla Gourmet by opening up a temporary restaurant in a cattle mart in Bandon, County Cork. Cotter has been referred to as "a gentle food giant in the South". Meals served by the restaurant include goat's cheese gnocchi with pan-fried artichokes. A dinner at the restaurant costs approximately €40 per person, not including wine.
Awards
On 7 March 2009, the Irish Independent listed Café Paradiso, alongside Neven Maguire of the MacNean Restaurant, Brian McCann of Shu and Martin Shanahan of Fishy Fishy Cafe, as a restaurant whom many would be surprised to learn has no Michelin stars to its name and never has had. At the time there were only six restaurants in possession of this accolade and all of them were in Dublin. There were none in Cork.