So you’re in Gorey or Courtown for the weekend of relaxation. Pajamas in the afternoon and slabs of Royal Dutch are the order of the day. You spot a break in the clouds! It’s time for a Bar B Que!

Do you opt for the following (Kebabs and chicken in a nice marinade)?

No! You’re in the Sunny South East and it’s down to Tesco for Burgers!

You’ve walked the few miles from Courtown, dodging the odd Impreza and souped up Renault Megane, the hangover induced by that last round of West Coast Cooler the night before screaming for grease.

You get into Tesco, pick up a packet of burgers and a disposable BBQ, you hitch back to the mobile home, fireup the BBQ, kill 70 wasps and what’s this?

THE BURGERS ARE GREEN! HOW CAN THIS BE!!!!???!!

Oh wait: It’s the end of August and the burgers went off the previous June. Nice!

Back to Tesco the next day to complain (and to alert the management to a potential public health risk). Meet the customer service people. Ask to talk to the manager. Kept standing around with a bag of green burgers for 25mins. No one comes. Back to customer service. ‘Oh the manager is having a HR meeting’ and ‘can’t see you now’. A little piqued: down to the back of the shop to investigate. Into the store room and what’s this? The reason the queue at the tills is usually 5 deep with 3 tills open: all the staff are hiding down here. Good for them, it’s badly paid anyway.

Manager is hiding in one of the side rooms. Shouting draws him from his layer. He tells me he was having an important meeting. I ask was it about selling meat that is 3 months past ‘use before’. Works out it wasn’t. I ask him how his priorities have changed. He takes an official complaint and I am somewhat mollified.

Later in the afternoon I get a call from tesco: more details collected and then: nothing, not even a normal coloured bag of burgers. They changed the manager. I’m not going to start the process again with the new one. I did my bit for public safety.

Here’s where the good food tips come in…There’s a farmers market on Sat 9 to 3pm in the neighbouring carpark. Eggs are cheaper, so is cheese. The meat from the Lamb and sausage guy is much better than Tesco and works out the same pound for pound. The Lebanese place does some great stuff, the veggies stand is good, and you can haggle with them.

And guess what? It’s all fresh, these people have reputations to think about after all.

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Greeting and decor on arrival in Kim Khao plesant but nothing special. Reasonable crowd for a Thursday night. Ordered mixed platter of starters. Dumplings and Prawn toast reasonably tasty, tofu, pork, chicken satay and spring rolls all OK but a little disappointing. Couldn’t recommend the mix, would have been happier with just the tasty bits.

Main courses were fish curry and pad thai noodles with chicken. A good indicator for the quality of the rest of the menu, the Pad Thai was very good, reasonably sized portion. When I asked for recommendations I was pointed towards the standard Green and red curries, so I ran out of ideas and asked for whatever it was that got the critics so excited. The fish curry was what I got and I was pleased with it.

FInal verdict: From a limited sampling of the menu, I ‘d say that it was overhyped a little, but good and easily the best asian cuisine for at least 20 miles. It’s not expensive for the food you’re getting, the kind of place you work your way through the menu to find the good stuff, and then end up there every Friday.

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