Restaurant Review: Eccles Hotel Glengarriff Harbour, West Cork
Some 35 years ago, an old compadre and I set out one day to thumb from Castletownbere back to our base camp in near Skibbereen.
Though teenagers, we were seasoned hitchers, wily veterans of the road with all the tricks.
Yet this day we couldn’t catch so much as a cold and eventually walked 34km before our eventual collapse, in Glengarriff, just outside Eccles Hotel, beginning what has remained a lifelong grá for the high, handsome, and elegant old building looking out to Bantry Bay.
Stone broke, we could do no more than sneak into the toilets for a quick slug of tapwater, yet a then-callow youth still soaked up the historical ambience of the former stomping grounds of Yeats and Shaw like a soothing bath of Epsom salts.
Down through the years, I have popped in whenever passing; the grandeur of its halcyon days may have frayed around the edges but there has always remained a truly comforting welcome about the place and an integrity to its sometimes ramshackle interiors that owes nothing to any swatch-bearing interior designer and everything to the art of aging gracefully.
Mind you, the food offering was always functional at best so news that chef Eddie Atwell was taking over the reigns was most welcome.
Atwell is a seasoned pro (formerly of Simon Rogan’s iconic two Michelin-starred L’Enclume restaurant in Cumbria; apparently shining on the Great British Menu) with a preference for finest locally foraged and cultivated produce.
We begin with a selection of starters: Eccles fish cake, smoked beef fritters, fritto misto, pork crubeens. All are pleasant and tasty if less than inspiring, particularly the tired farmed salmon in a rather greasy fritto misto.
La Daughter heads straight for a generous bowl of penne pasta with a creamy tomato sauce though Me Ol’ Doll is less enamoured of her butter poached hake with potato, mussel, dill, radish.
The fish, mealy and overcooked, flounders in a watery butter sauce that is distinctly unappealing. Having sighed a sayonara to any prospect of more elevated fare from a restaurant menu I’m told has been shelved for the month of August (why, in the height of tourist season?), I decide to go full ‘bistro’, opting for ham hock.
The braised hock is overly salty, dry, and in sore need of fatty succulence, while a garnish of bacon strips is a culinary tautology, quite unnecessary.
French-style peas, fried egg, and handcut chips fail to rescue a needlessly disappointing dish. Neither of us come remotely near finishing but plates are removed without question, an indication of service issues confirmed elsewhere; not the fault of our lovely servers but of those charged with their training.
There are no complaints from LD about chocolate brownie and ice cream but MOD’s rhubarb and apple crumble is another matter: Served in a large glass container we both initially mistake for a mixing bowl, overly stewed fruit is hot but cold, pre-cooked crumble is scattered on top; desultory treatment for what is usually a simple yet splendid old comforter.
I have no problem with restaurant’s marking up wines, usually close to three times the retail value, but the assumption is, in return, you receive a degree of professional knowledge and husbandry of those same wines. I ask our (very lovely) server for a suggestion for a red wine.
She informs me she doesn’t drink red so suggests her favourite white, something a friend might do in a pub but not good enough from a supposed hospitality professional.
The wine I eventually select myself, from an uninspiring list, is too warm; glasses are grubby, even chipped.
I can’t escape the feeling the current owners feel a ‘star’ chef is the answer to a litany of inevitable woes that must come with trying to keep this antique old operation, a real money guzzler, on the road.
I have it on good account from several sources that Atwell is indeed a talented chef but on tonight’s form he is struggling to deliver on what I suspect are limited resources.
With a highly experienced restaurant manager of real imagination and adequate resources provided for Atwell to truly shine, I could think of few finer places to dine in West Cork — but for the moment I’ll be sticking to soup and tea.
