Tipperary: Chez Hans
The dining room at Chez Hans, Cashel, Co Tipperary dining room is a wonderful combination of the grand and the intimate, the braggadocio and the subtle. The food is, well, perfect. Picture: John D Kelly
THE Rock of Cashel is, like so many other European treasures, corseted by a cowl of scaffold as craftsmen try to renew the regal work of their predecessors, some of it from a millennium ago. They may be restoring restorations or even restoring restorations of restorations, undertaken since the 12th century round tower, high cross and Romanesque chapel, 13th century Gothic cathedral, 15th century castle and the restored Hall of the Vicars Choral were added to the mid Middle Ages’ complex.
As the buildings show, the present always pirouettes around the past and finalising a definition of the past is as complex and as layered as Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimond de la Reyniere’s rôti sans pareil.
One link to Europe in its story is that when work on the Romanesque Cormac’s Chapel began in 1127 the Abbot of Regensburg in Germany, Irish missionary Dirmicius, sent two carpenters to help. Their influence is seen on the twin towers on either side of the junction of the nave and chancel where a Germanic style, unknown elsewhere in Ireland, is apparent.
Those Bavarian carpenters — imagine their journey from the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers to Tipperary — were not the last Germans to have a very welcome impact in the Golden Vale. When chef Hans Peter Matthiae and his wife Derry bought Cashel’s Synod Hall, a relatively new 1861 building, in 1968 and opened Chez Hans they began a near 30-year journey that lasted until son Jason and his wife Louise took over. Jason’s brothers, Stefan and Hans, run the impressive daytime operation Café Hans.
Like Cormac’s Chapel, the dining room is a wonderful combination of the grand and the intimate, the braggadocio and the subtle. It is a lovely space, with almost perfect acoustics for a good dining room — you cannot hear what the guests at the next table are saying but you can hear the clink of glass right across the room before it is absorbed up by the linen tablecloths.
DW and I were joined by VW and on a Wednesday night journey from Dublin booked an 8.15 table. The dining room was, reassuringly, more or less full.
This was one of those the holiday-is-over celebrations, to mark an enjoyable trip and fortify ourselves for the road ahead so it was a tad, though not overly, indulgent. VW began with Dingle crab crème brûlée, pickled vegetable salad and toasted sourdough. It seemed more than lovely and was enjoyed thoroughly. Though DW passed on a starter I had tagliatelle of wild mushrooms baby spinach and Parmesan. This was simply one of the most impressive starters I’ve enjoyed. Taste, tactile pleasure, richness and layers of taste and scent.
For her main course DW had hake deep fried in Japanese breadcrumbs. Hake is almost omnipresent, invariably roasted and very occasionally fried but this was a revelation.
My main course was roast rack of lamb, roast garlic, ratatouille with jus — a supplement of €6 — and it was wonderful, moist, fragrant, off set wonderfully by the ratatouille and prodded towards something sublime by the garlic, nature’s redefining netsuke of pungency almost creating a void for the next flavour. A benchmark dish.
VW had roast duck and celeriac puree, sprouts and port jus, beautiful new potatoes. Suffice to say for the first time in days she was more or less silent.
The wine was Domaine de Boissan Gigondas and though not one of those Mathieu Bastareaud-style heavyweight, smashing wines it was enlivening.
The desserts — like the breads prepared by Stefan Matthia — were far, far better than the great majority offered in Irish restaurants, so good they made glasses of Tokaji redundant.
There is a painting of the Last Supper in the room and if, in time, I discover that my next meal is to be my last I’d be more than happy to have it at Chez Hans. It was by far the best meal in a week spent visiting the vaunted restaurants of Toulouse.
Dinner for three, three courses with wine, two glasses of indulgent dessert wine, coffee and tea came to €167.60, tip extra.
Weekday menu — two courses €27, three courses €33 with some supplements — Tuesday to Thursday 6pm to 9.30pm, Friday 6pm to 7pm. Saturday 6pm to 10pm.
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