The service is delightful: but without chef, dinner was badly below par...
÷ PORTMARNOCK HOTEL AND GOLF LINKS Strand Road Portmarnock Co Dublin Phone: 01 846 0611 portmarnock.com
DESPITE the fact that I agree with Mark Twain about golf (a good walk, spoiled) and am puzzled as to why golfers all seem to dress like Val Doonican, some of my best friends play the game with unbridled enthusiasm. I realise it’s not really a character flaw.
Witness my guest on this excursion, a master butcher, fine conversationalist, impeccable pater familias and my go-to man for advice on the technicalities of meat. He loves his golf.
It seemed appropriate to invite him along to visit to the newly refurbished Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links which, as the press release tells us, belonged at different times to the Jameson family of whiskey fame, to Eamonn Andrews and at one point in its history hosted the wedding reception for one T. Wogan, long before he became Sir Terry.
Inside, it feels expensive, to the point that I suddenly feel decidedly out of place, windblown from my walk from the Dart and wearing a fleece.
In the restaurant, which is all carpeted hush and the muffled sounds of people d’un certain age (largely mine, to be fair) spending quite a lot of money, I am greeted by manager Derek Yu, formerly of Chapter One.
This is the point where I need to stress that the staff and the service are delightful. It’s also where I need to mention that the chef, Tom Walsh, who is a man of considerable ability, was unavoidably absent on the evening we visited. So do please bear this in mind as you read the following (and the fact that the poor man will need a night off anyway in the course of the week).
The press release describes the food in The 1780 restaurant as ‘fine dining’, a phrase that makes me want to run a mile. It implies starched linen, starched service, fecky food assembled with tweezers and a humdinger of a bill at the end of it all.
The food here is certainly ambitious and everything we ate was quite possibly a good idea in theory. By the time it got on to the plates, it was a different story with the exception of – hang on a minute, I’ll quote the menu – ‘Boudin of Guinea Fowl, Shitake Mushroom, Pan Fried Foie Gras, Perigourdine Sauce’. It was fine, the boudin moist and silky, the foie gras cooked pink, the sauce reasonably truffley; the shitake wasn’t sure why it had been invited but was fine.
The other starter comprised monkfish cheek (overcooked to the point of becoming quite hard and resistant to the fork); fennel marinated courgette (the immediate question is ‘why’?); and clam and saffron broth (which was mouth-puckeringly salty).
An unspecified cut of Angus beef, after it had been dissected by my master butcher friend, appeared to be rump and turned out to have good flavour but was as tough as my gardening boots.
We’ll draw a veil over the rest of the plate but I’ll quote the butcher: ‘The Angus rump was poorly butchered and arrived on the plate in the shape of a triangle. It is very tough when not cut against the grain. A steak when served should be of a rectangle shape and cut either thick or thin depending on the weight. It should be cut at right angles to the grain.’
Lamb loin chops looked (a) overcooked and (b) poorly prepared, in that they came with the skin intact and unscored so the meat was hard to eat. The ‘hard’ theme continued with what I eventually worked out was an artichoke heart into which it proved difficult to insert the tines of my fork. As to why anyone would add lentils to the jus, I have no idea.
At this point we decided to head down the road to McHugh’s for some cheese.
The bill, including two aperitifs, a bottle of wine and mineral water, came to €138.95.