Restaurant Review: House Restaurant at The Cliff House
There was a hotel perched above the harbour in Ardmore where a 10-year-old waif in woolen trunks once earned his lifesaving merit badges over the course of an endless hot summer ‘cough-mumble-mutter’ years ago but it bears scant resemblance to the current incarnation, The Cliff House Hotel, a modernistic structure not unlike a cruise liner where every single space within is designed to draw the gaze out towards the stunning sea views.
The magnificent bay, of course, remains pretty much the same even if tonight it is coyly shrouded in early summer mist, which has the effect of for once returning the focus back onto the dining room itself, an understated, comfortable and relaxing space.
These days, I waver between agnostic and downright atheistic about the amuse bouche, an unadvertised ‘gift’ from the kitchen supplementing a diner’s original order. Where once I would have opened the gob and made like a gannet, it is now an order I always attempt to calibrate to the nearest square inch of available belly space, if nothing else, to avoid waste.
I am even more unsure when presented with the alarmingly large selection that precedes our starter: savoury meringues, including pleasing beetroot with creamed cheese; seaweed and fennel dashi, a fleeting, umami-laden echo of the sea outside; a superb take on the Mugaritz ‘stone’, baby potato encased and baked in edible clay with a dab of sweet three-cornered leek mayonnaise, has The Cat’s Pyjamas rightly shivering with ecstasy; and a shallot panna cotta topped with a ‘caviar’ of tapioca ‘pearls’, dried potato croutons and hazelnut is a marvellous marriage of balanced textures and flavours. It seems my formerly trenchant position on the amuse bouche is still a work in progress.
The Cliff House’s Executive Chef, Dutchman Martijn Kaijuiter, may be a giant of a man, standing some eight inches over six foot, yet he has an impossibly delicate hand and one of the most refined aesthetic sensibilities of any chef in Ireland for his plating of dishes can be quite stunning, a visual feast ever before a morsel passes the lips.
TCP’s starter is such a plate: Bantry Bay Organic Salmon, Pickled Vegetables, Codium, Black Toast, Salmon Ice Cream, Smoke.
A glass cloche is lifted, smoke dissipating to gradually reveal a breathtakingly gorgeous assemblage: rosé pinks of various iterations of salmon, yellow rocket, blue borage, pickled vegetables, including a disc of candy-stripe beet, and nestling in the centre a glistening quenelle of shocking pink salmon ice cream. TCP gasps with delight, takes to whimpering after the first mouthful.
The visual impact of my own starter is less dramatic but it turns out to be one of the most sublime eating experiences so far this year: Peas, Tonburi Akita, Nashi Pear, Mint, Olive Oil, Frisee Salad; an intricate little affair including pea pod coulis, ajo blanco, a frosted ‘pane’ of olive oil, salt, sugar and black onion seeds, the ‘land caviar’ of Tonburi (fermented grains from Akita, in Japan), gritty pear and crisp frisee leaves, but it is the elemental purity of exquisitely fresh new season peas that constitute the beating heart of this wonderful dish.
Our ‘intermediates’ follow: for me a ‘comfort blanket’ with resonating BBQ notes of Poussin, Wild Morels, Spring Onion, Chervil, Chicken & Cream Sauce. TCP’s fine ‘Seafood Cocktail’ includes red mullet, monkfish, scallop, octopus and lobster under a ‘cocktail’ hollandaise with whiskey, sherry, lemon and tomato puree.
TCP’s main, Atlantic Halibut, is a ‘meaty’ piscine slab enhanced with a melting sliver of waygu ‘lardo’ with Garden Turnip, Potato, Nasturtium, Saffron Jus. I enjoy McGrath’s Suffolk Lamb with a persillade of basil, parsley, mint and tarragon and gritty gnocchi, Roman-style, with polenta and saffron, then fried off in lamb fat.
We finish with the dessert tasting plate, all fine and dandy, if a tad too mainstream for my liking, until I hit Sea Buckthorn with rice, cream and meringue. I wildly applaud the hand so parsimonious with sugar but it is the aroma that truly trips the Proustian switch; an undeniable and highly evocative waft of wafers and ice cream, a daily staple from summer seaside holidays all those years ago that truly stirs the long-forgotten waif within, a fitting and surprisingly nostalgic conclusion to a very good meal.
