Restaurant review: Standing ovation for The Glass Curtain on MacCurtain Street
Brian Murray at The Glass Curtain, Thompson House, MacCurtain Street, Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
File this one under Reasons-To-Blame-The-Covid #3,071, for The Glass Curtain was on my radar long before it first arrived on MacCurtain St at the tail end of 2019 as an exceedingly stylish new addition to Leeside dining.
Chef/proprietor, Brian Murray, had never headed up a kitchen let alone helmed his own restaurant, so I gave him a grace period to find his feet. That time had duly passed and word around town was positive, so, having sampled a very good dish of his at a cookery competition in February, all augured well and my portly posterior was hovering, mere inches from landing on a seat in this when Lockdown 1.0 whipped the chair right out from under me.
Local diners may not have known much about the Midleton man but that’s because he passed the bulk of his culinary career outside Ireland, including two years in Dubai under Michelin three-starred superstar, Yannick Alléno — the French Gordon Ramsey, except better looking.
After that, Murray ‘ran away to sea’, cheffing on superyachts for wealthy owners, and clocking up stages in top restaurants around the globe, all the while saving to open his own restaurant back home once he’d put down a decade away.
Murray was early out of the traps with a takeaway ‘finish-at-home’ offering and it was most popular indeed and with a different three-courser (€40 for two sharing) on offer for Friday, Saturday and Sunday (and one vegetarian meal available on all three nights). We decide to road test all three.
Judging by the number of duds I’ve encountered over the years, the innate simplicity of a fish pie is no guarantee of success. Failure to source good quality ingredients is one problem. Worse again is when good ingredients are treated without respect or overwhelmed by the chef’s ego and a need to tamper with nature’s perfection.
Murray does everything right: seafood (salmon, cod, smoked haddock, mussels) is fresh, firm, swimming in a fine, creamy near-chowder, housed in good-quality puff pastry. Half an hour in my oven yields a bubbling piscine pleasure-dome capped with a crisp, golden ‘roof’ that cures all the lockdown woes that might ail a body.
Balanced champ mash potatoes soak up excess sauce and just-blanched Kilbrack Organic Greens (Russian kale) finish exquisitely in herbed butter. Dessert is a rock-solid Apple Crumble and Vanilla Custard.
Saturday and we are having chargrilled lamb rump, deliciously tender, pink and juicy meat, paired with sweet honey roast rainbow carrots, Vadouvan spice (a class of Franco-Indo curry), yoghurt and tahini dressing and nicely bitter grilled gem lettuce, the sense of edible exoticism anchored by gorgeous Lyonnaise potatoes, shot through with notes of sweet onion and thyme.
After that, it would take a true glutton to put away quite decadent chocolate chip cookies with salted caramel sauce but if there’s one thing we’re not shy of round these parts, it’s industrial-grade gluttony — chocolate chip cookies being something of a specialist subject with the progeny.
Our ‘Sunday roast’ is Short Ribs of Beef, which emerges after half an hour from the oven as a deeply flavoursome piece of meat that peels away from the bone, especially succulent when dredged in the accompanying jus.
Sweet, earthy glazed beets still retain a contrapuntal brightness, hitting clean, high notes, while creamed and slightly crunchy sweetcorn adds texture and contrast. And it wouldn’t be Sunday without roast potatoes to complete another homely classic.
Poached pear, chocolate and chestnut frangipane tart with cardamom creme Anglaise is a compelling inducement to sin, finding space in bellies we presumed had long ago shut up shop for the evening.
This is very obviously different fare to that which Murray serves in his restaurant and I look forward more than ever to dining in The Glass Curtain but, for the moment, these three meals, perfectly deliver the soothing comfort that has become one of the great tropes of this year of eating.
It’s like fetching up to a dinner party when you’ve never before eaten the host’s food and discovering to your delight they really can cook and afterwards everyone sits around saying said host really should open a restaurant. Well, this one already has and on the basis of this showing, I can’t wait to visit.
- The Glass Curtain@Home Thompson House, MacCurtain Street, Cork
- Tel: 021-4518659; theglasscurtain.ie
