Restaurant review: You'll be a fan of The Mill Restaurant too
The Mill Restaurant
- The Mill Restaurant, Cliff at Lyons, Lyons Road, Celbridge, Co. Kildare.
- Tel: 01-6303500
- cliffatlyons.ie
- Wednesday - Sunday, 12.30-3.30 & 5.30-10.30
Tony Ryan will always be remembered for Ryanair and for creating a thriving airline leasing sector in Ireland, but I think we should also add the Lyons Demesne to his legacy.
Ryan poured millions into the restoration of the abandoned village on the estate when he purchased it in 1996 and it shows. His work has been sensitively continued by the Cliff group and these days it is known as the ‘Cliff at Lyons’. Described as a ‘Hotel and Country Retreat’ you really do feel as though you have ‘retreated’ far from the madding crowd as you wander among the grey-stone early 19th Century buildings — you will struggle to remember that Dublin is 30 minutes away.
If you are hungry there is a pantry shop providing picnic baskets and provisions and if you have had foresight you will have booked into Aimsir Restaurant months previously. Aimsir is as good as you've heard and I lavished it with praise when I reviewed it here, but there is also now a third fine dining option in The Mill restaurant.
The Mill has a beautiful double (or triple) height room and the sound of rushing water just outside the window provides an engaging bucolic atmosphere. In the kitchen is Seán Smith who previously ran the Cliff Townhouse on St. Stephen’s Green and won much praise (including from me) for his seafood cooking.
Lobster Salad (€22) got us off to a rather brilliant start — a tower of pristine meaty lobster and fruity, zingy baby tomatoes from the Lyons’ garden plus some creamy burrata to hold things together. A dressing made from tomato juice, olive oil, and a light touch of balsamic added some accents but, as was appropriate, it was the quality of the lobster and the tomatoes that sang out the loudest.
Kilkee Crab Risotto (€20) was richly flavoured and topped with fresh crab, a green salad and an intriguing tomato sorbet that added a crisp contrast. Once again fresh tomatoes from the garden were a key to the success of the dish and the Engineer could not find fault.
Halibut ‘on the bone’ (€38) was a thick meaty slab that glistened pleasingly once its flesh was pierced — demonstrating precision cooking. A pretty stuffed courgette flower filled with a prawn ceviche sat on top and on the side was lithe sumptuous aubergine caviar. And yes, you guessed it, more tomatoes — this time finely diced and dressed into a ‘fondue’, If you have an ingredient this good it should absolutely be served with every course.
County Antrim Coastal Lamb (€35) with a carrot and oyster sauce and sprouting broccoli was pink and flavourful with the quality of the meat shining out from the plate. Seán’s chips are fairly legendary and they did not let him down — crisp and perfectly fluffy, a feat all the more remarkable as the skins had not been fully removed (normally a sin in my book).
A small tower of Garden Raspberries (€9) was arranged with blobs of white chocolate mousse between layers of brandy snap discs — they instantly, perfectly, transported me to my mother’s garden in the 1980s. Roast Plums (€9) were richly flavoured and topped with a twirl of puff pastry and a quenelle of crème frâiche lightly sweetened with honey and lavender.
The wine list is short and starts at €30 for the ‘Cliff Montepulciano’ and ‘Cliff Trebbiano’ house wines, but quickly jumps into the €40-€50 range for anything interesting. A few more wines in the €35-45 range would not go amiss and I’d like to see a little more information, especially on the more expensive wines. Our bottle of La Garnatxa Fosca del Priorat was probably worth its €50 with layered bright red fruits balanced by acidity and structure — served appropriately cool. I later discovered it was made from very old vines and is part of a worthy project to revive old Spanish Garnacha vineyards — such information would I think encourage others to order it.
Our bill came to €188 which was a fair reflection on the quality of the ingredients and the skills in the kitchen and at front of house. I particularly loved the respect the kitchen gave to the ingredients at its disposal — many a chef would have wanted to put sugar on those raspberries or mess with the tomatoes but they showed admirable restraint and the food is all the better for it. A treat.
