Cocktails are not usually the first thing associated with a pizza and
burger menu, but Luso, on Church Street behind the Black Horse Inn in
Cavan town, runs a short cocktail list alongside its food rather than
treating drinks as an afterthought. It sits next to a rotating craft
beer selection, and both are built to match the kitchen's output rather
than to play it safe with the usual handful of standards.
That kitchen serves sourdough Neapolitan pizza, made from a dough
fermented for roughly three days before it reaches the stone oven, and
dry aged smash burgers sourced from Herd Butchery in Butlersbridge.
Pizza toppings include Corleggy parmesan from Belturbet and rocket from
along the Annalee. It is food with real richness to it, and a proper
cocktail list gives the evening somewhere to go that a couple of pints
alone would not.
Luso operates Thursday to Sunday evenings and currently holds 4.9 out of
5 from 136 Google reviews, among the highest ratings of any restaurant
in Cavan town. Keeping a cocktail list running well in a small kitchen
that is primarily built around food takes more staff attention than
sticking to bottled beer and wine, and it is one of the details that
separates Luso from most casual dining in the area.
The entrance sits behind the Black Horse Inn rather than on Church
Street itself, so a first visit usually means a short walk past the
pub's frontage to find the door. For anyone planning a longer evening
rather than a quick meal, the drinks side is worth building into the
plan rather than treating as incidental to the food.
Between the pizza, the burgers, and a cocktail list that was clearly put
together with some care rather than assembled from whatever was on hand,
Luso reads as a restaurant trying to get every part of the evening
right rather than getting the food right and leaving the rest to chance.
Staff appear reasonably knowledgeable about the drinks list based on
the pattern in reviews, able to talk through what is currently on the
rotating beer selection or suggest a cocktail rather than simply pointing
at a printed menu, which for a kitchen this size running a short week is
not something every restaurant manages to maintain.
