Restaurant review: Milesian is a hidden gem that deserves to be a national treasure

• Milesian Restaurant
• Main St, Martramane, Castlegregory, Co Kerry, V92 W3X7
• Opening Hours: Closed for winter, re-opening 2023
• Tel [phone]
• www.facebook.com/milesianrestaurant/

It may be a bit rich, reviewing an establishment readers will be unable to visit until next June but think of it instead as an especial consideration in furnishing ample time for you to plan an essential pilgrimage to Milesian, a very special restaurant in the wilds of West Kerry.

Also, to be baldly pragmatic, Milesian’s chef-proprietor Frankie Fitzgerald needs the public oxygen to even keep the flame lit as he puts the restaurant into mothballs for eight months over winter as he has done each season since opening in 2016, even surviving through two years of Covid lockdowns.

Castlegregory is a lovely village on the Northern side of the gorgeous Dingle peninsula, a classic summer seaside resort of the old school, which wakes up each June when families decamp to mobile homes and holiday houses.

Many of them have been doing it for generations and it makes for a captive audience, particularly in July and August, but come September, a truncated season is all but over, petering out entirely by month’s end.

What’s more, though Fitzgerald gets tremendous local support, and his wonderfully cooked menus of excellently sourced local seasonal fare are superb value (two courses, €35; three courses, €40), location is far, far away from the volume of footfall of an urban location that might keep such an enterprise humming year-round; and the peninsula’s remoteness is extremely challenging for travelling destination diners.

Lobster and potato cake

Even reduced winter opening hours are out of the question: the 200-year-old traditional Irish cottage that houses Milesian is a thoroughly charming venue, rustic, homely, a pleasingly scruffy interior, entirely authentic, not remotely twee; but it is also a contrary sort and left unused for even three or four days, warmth rapidly leaches from the building, especially in winter. These days, not a sinner in hospitality can afford to heat an empty premises.

So, Fitzgerald and the sterling young teams he assembles each year shut up shop and head off for the winter, working in high-end restaurants in Ireland and abroad. The following June it begins anew, effectively launching a brand new restaurant each year.

I first encountered Fitzgerald working in the kitchen of the late, lamented Idá’s, in Dingle and he has further added to his fine body of experience in other excellent restaurants but there is only so long this annual upheaval can be sustained.

The Castlegregory native is now arriving at a stage in his career when he needs to find out for once and for all whether he can turn the family restaurant into a full-time project, calling time on his annual culinary migration.

Potatoes with truffle mayo 

Tonight’s menu is a tasting of Milesian’s greatest hits of 2022, with natural wine pairings. First, three snacks. Cod brandade, textured rather than more usual puree, a hearty comforter, wolfed down, while taco of shredded Skeaghanore duck with corn is spiky with jalapeno punch, but my favourite is lobster on singular and extraordinary potato cakes. All three pair perfectly with Mark Jenkins’ Cockagee Irish Perry.

Next is a picture pretty plate: cured trout, wrapped in roast nori, superb fish perfectly poised on the textural sweet spot between toothsome and tender, finished with a pointillist vision of dots: verdant wakame emulsion with clean anise notes of dill and fennel, and smokey cultured charcoal cream. Broth of kombu and bonito, flush with marine umami, completes the dish.

Fitzgerald amplifies flavours of Kerry Lamb in wontons, al dente parcels with grilled shiitake, applying pungent smoked lamb fat, its potent notes verging on tallow. Bone and seaweed broth, salty crunch of marsh samphire and herbaceous parsley oil, flesh out the flavour spectrum.

A fillet of cod is briefly cured, and pan-fried in dashi butter emulsion, yielding shimmering pearlescent flesh with golden amber crown. It is served with tender braised fennel in sweet and very delicious corn velouté with mussels and girolles, local corn providing surprising heft in the mid-range, grounding another excellent dish. The star of tonight’s sublime pairings, a Muscadet (Nicolas Reau, La Pentière, Loire 2020), crisp white fruit and mineral salinity, is a perfect foil for the prevailing sweetness.

Duck and grilled leek 

The centrepiece is more Skeaghanore duck; hand on heart, I have never had duck breast cooked so well. Fat rendered down in the pan, breast is panfried, rested, then finished over charcoal. The meat is impossibly tender, pulsating with fulsome balanced flavours. It is served with silky artichoke puree and grilled leeks topped with custard of 15 Fields cheddar, crispy shallots and elderberry jus. That may read like a gouty gutbuster, but it is actually surprisingly spry, not at all ‘heavy’, a joy to eat. Anyway, juicy, fresh fruit of a grippy Zweigelt (Judith Beck, Ink, 2021) perfectly recalibrates the palate between each mouthful. Steamed spuds topped with truffle mayo and Cáis na Tíre cheese are a ludicrously delicious excess devastating any lingering dietary resolve.

Wild Blackberries, Poached Apple, Rose Hip and Vanilla Mascarpone is one of the best desserts I’ve enjoyed this year. Earlier that evening we picked beautifully ripe blackberries from windswept shoreline hedgerows tasting a pronounced salinity of sea salt borne inland on the wind.

Wild Blackberries, Poached Apple, Rose Hip and Vanilla Mascarpone

It is again evident in tonight’s proud firm bramble fruit, cooked briefly in wine syrup, with rosehip puree. Crisp, poached Granny Smith apples are tart counterpoint to saccharine excess and barely sweetened vanilla mascarpone cushions all in velvety lactic opulence.

And that’s it, Frankie’s superb young team, including sous-chef Gareth O’Brien and Eve Molloy on the floor, start packing bags, cleaning out caravan summer domiciles and migrate for the winter.

And that leads to my own personal and entirely selfish reason for writing this review now rather than next year.

Milesian is already a great Irish restaurant which I dearly hope to return to next year; consider this review a downpayment on my insurance policy to ensure the continued survival of what is currently a hidden local gem, but deserves to be celebrated as a genuine national treasure.