Restaurant Review: Refined comfort cuts the Mustard

The food has always been delicious at The Mustard Seed: well sourced produce, delivered as very tasty, comforting, homely fare

Now to set about nagging one of Ireland’s finest hosts, proprietor John Edward Joyce, to give serious consideration to a future Christmas opening

Sat, 31 Dec, 2022 - 02:00

Joe McNamee

The Mustard Seed Country House & Restaurant
Ballingarry, Co Limerick V94EHN8
Tel: +353 69 68508
www.mustardseed.ie
Opening Hours: Mon-Sun, Dinner, 7pm-9pm

For the first time in forever, thanks to various machinations of the universe, I didn’t cook our Christmas dinner and, hey, the world continued rotating on its axis.

Instead, I surrendered to a blissful and entirely novel indolence as soon as I rose. I stuffed my gob with pannetone and insanely sweet mocha coffee. I dithered over presents. I drank Champagne, ate oysters, bothered the present pile some more.

When the more regular pace of your daily grind is akin to that of a hamster with a kilo of amphetamines inside the Large Hadron Collider, it’s amazing how swiftly a body can power down and embrace pathological sloth.

Later in the day, I endured a delightful aperitif and sat down with ravenous appetite to immediately devour a gorgeous meal cooked by my brothers-in-law, with an appetite I never, ever have when I’ve been the one who has passed hours slaving over the stove.

I don’t miss at all the arduous slog of professional cheffing though SpouseGirl certainly pines for the impossibly slim figure I then sported, with more fat on a chip, for I ate next to nothing. Even years later, if I’ve spent an age preparing a long and convoluted ‘special occasion’ meal, sitting down is like facing a plateful of ‘work’. I inevitably pick for the next hour or so, only really beginning to eat by the cheese course.

It all gets me seriously thinking what it would be like to give myself entirely to a Yuletide hospitality venue, to hand over responsibility for my feeding, watering and slumbering to the professionals who also clean everything up afterwards. Should it ever open its doors for Christmas, I feel The Mustard Seed would be an ideal venue.

A few weeks previous, at the height of that icy spell in mid-December, we throw open the shutters on our South-facing room in The Mustard Seed to be greeted by a shimmering crystal blue sky. Brilliant bright winter sun illuminates frosted white lawns that roll down from the house to the hollow below, and the glittering white-capped roofs of Ballingarry village. It is an almost too glorious Christmas vision from an advertising creative’s fever dreams, and if I had an Elsa frock, I’d have let rip with a few verses of ‘Let It Go’ out over this gelid frozen wonderland.

When inky black, bone-freezing evening falls outside, we are swaddled within, sunken into a sofa before a roaring log fire, bubbles fizzing in glass, menus in hand, before we’re lead into an equally fizzing dining room, bubbling over with the sound of humans hard at the ‘work’ of being very content indeed.

Despite sub-zero temperatures, we begin at the lighter end of a classic four-courser. SpouseGirl has Garden Peas, with charred gem lettuce and asparagus, quite delightful, all the ‘green’ elements radiating uplifting, energising freshness and crunch, while egg and mint foam grounds with gentle umami, red onion ‘pearls’—possibly drops of olive oil set with agar agar—add pleasing spikes of allium’s astringent sweetness.

Garden Peas, with charred Gem lettuce and asparagus

I have ambient-temperature squid, eel and octopus. Squid is tender, almost creamy; delicious eel, firm with oily sweetness; octopus, toothsome, with soft marine salinity. Charred salsify has bite while saffron espuma and yuzu bring lush, emollient acidity. It too is a delicious dish, Gruner Veltliner (Markus Huber, Vision 2020) admirably bringing up the rear, green apple and citrus buttressed by rounded, mineral depth.

We continue our ‘lean, green’ theme, with immaculately judged, sublimely simple palate-cleansing salad: organic leaves with julienned cucumber for textural crunch. A divine dressing of natural yoghurt, adds both lactic tang and unctuous emollience, while dill trills sweet, clean anise, bouncing off walnut oil’s nutty mischief. I clean my plate.

Normal service resumes with my main course of roast pheasant. Yep, I’m back in sync with the almanac, my plate a full-blown platter of wintery, ‘Christmas’ fare, perfectly cooked leg and breast, flush with gamey flavour, flanked by verdant, crisp Brussel sprouts, sweet chestnut puree and chargrilled baby leeks. The grace note is fungal. Exquisitely braised mushrooms, gelatinous, juicy shiitakes and delightfully refined oyster mushrooms both add moist succulence to naturally drier pheasant.

Salmon, hollandaise sauce, garden kale, mussels, clams, red pepper, leek ash, reads like SpouseGirl might still be surfing a summer vibe but it too is muscular of flavour; not normally a fan, she declares the kale the ‘nicest’ she has ever eaten.

We share roast potatoes, crisp, golden, steaming and floury within; chunky wedges of carrot that taste of carrot; and more superb sprouts. If this were my Christmas Dinner, I couldn’t be happier.

We’re all in at this stage, sweet stuff included: I have hot dark chocolate mousse with a rather fine sheep milk ice cream, for SpouseGirl, brioche, with spiced ruby chocolate ice cream, almonds, meringue and buckthorn curd; both fun, well crafted, balanced and bowls are licked clean through to Australia.

The food has always been delicious at The Mustard Seed: well sourced produce, delivered as very tasty, comforting, homely fare and always in such great abundance that I inevitably waddled away from the table.

During summer 2021, however, I noticed the change and remember thinking the food was as good as I’d ever tasted from this kitchen.

It has moved on significantly further again, still ticking all those boxes, of authenticity, provenance and flavour, but there is now a pronounced precision and refinement to chef Angel Pirev’s craft. It is as if those plates of old were stripped back, shorn of all save the absolute essence of the dish, leaving only the essential elements. Certainly, he has added more ‘cheffy’ techniques but they are deftly deployed, no showboating, a more sophisticated shorthand only there to enhance a singular vision of each dish’s outcome in terms of flavour, texture and balance. And yet the fare served up retains that comforting mothering authenticity, that sense you’re sitting down to a lovely, unpretentious, heart-warming, home-cooked ‘dinner’; and that really is quite some trick to pull off.