Restaurant Review: Fisherman’s Pub, Co Galway
In truth, some hotels of a similar stature are like that — before you even park your car, there’s a level of social pressure.
Are we dressed for the occasion? Did we bring along enough manners — and are they the right size?
Will it matter if we can’t tell the difference between Chablis, Chardonnay and Chateauneuf-du-Pape?
We’re in Roundstone, Connemara, for the week, and while we know several bars in the beautiful harbour village and some restaurants in nearby Clifden will give us more bang for our buck, we have passed by the entrance to Ballynahinch Castle Hotel more times than we care to remember.
And so before we leave home, we check out the hotel’s website only to discover that the dinner menu for the hotel’s very swish Owenmore Restaurant is, at €65 per person, way above our budget for three people.
It isn’t that we’d love to, but when we factor in a bottle of even the most reasonably priced wine, we’re looking at over €220 before we even get to the tip.
Fine dining might be out, we reason, but not dining per se, and so we peruse the dinner menu for the hotel’s Fisherman’s Pub; this seems like a good second-best option, and we book a table.
Several days later, having landed in Roundstone, having checked in at our rental house, we’re at the doors of Ballynahinch Castle.
We’re late — very late, in fact — but the staff usher us in past the Owenmore Restaurant (boo hoo — some other time, perhaps?) into the self-styled Fisherman’s Pub with neither a problem nor a pout.
It’s lashing outside, colder than the month of June has any right to be, and there’s a blazing open log fire that is as warm as the welcome we receive.
The room is as authentic as any very old pub we’ve been in. Wood panelled walls bear the weight of all manner of fish-related memorabilia and paraphernalia, with everything from art work and photographs to prize-winning catches and display cabinets there for all to see.
The place is exactly what it claims: it’s a pub. But as we’re about to experience, not just any pub. In effect, this is a bar that, because the kitchen for it and Owenmore Restaurant are one and the same, serves (and I’ll stake my pension on it) the best bar food in Ireland.
Do not in any way, shape or form presume that the food produced and served here is a variant of ‘pub grub’. Rather, regard it as more casual than its svelte and sophisticated sister restaurant several steps away.
Because we’re late we’re starving, and so, like salivating heathens, we ignore the starters. From the mains menu we order Hereford rib eye steak, with grilled root vegetables and bourguignon sauce, and make an executive decision for two people to share the local seafood platter (which includes Cleggan crab, smoked wild Atlantic salmon, Connemara smoked Irish tuna, smoked mackerel, Galway oysters, mussels and crab claws, green salad and homemade brown bread — although we swap the oysters for more mussels).
As we wait, we sip from a bottle of wine (Col di Sasso Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Castello Banfi, 2010), and wolf down a selection of breads.
When the food arrives we tuck in and are silent for a few minutes; the reason for this is not because our hunger is slowly fading (which it is, of course) but due to the nature of the food. Steak and fish, remember, are two fairly simple dishes — it doesn’t take culinary genius to get them right. What is more than right, however, is the complementary and knowledgeable addition of empirically intuitive cooking.
The steak (with its mouth watering bourguignon sauce) is rapturously pronounced as the best ever, while the seafood platter is deemed to be a masterclass in preparation, presentation and (crucially) produce.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the meal is something of an object lesson in how to accomplish simple things in a way that’s inherently impressive.
When we have enough spare cash we’ll book a table at Owenmore Restaurant, but in the meantime be assured that food in the Fisherman’s Pub is perfect. Just perfect. Class. Just class.
Dinner for three, with wine, came to €112, €10 tip.
6pm-9.30pm, seven days.
Food: 10/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 8/10
Drink: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Casual dining in a bona fide castle doesn’t get any better or more atmospheric than this.
Ballynahinch Castle Hotel; Recess, Connemara, Co Galway;
tel: 095-31006;
www.ballynahinch-castle.com
