Pat Whelan Butcher

I was delighted to see that the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co. Waterford has just received a much coveted Michelin star.  The Michelin Guide has been in the business of evaluating and recommending restaurants and hotels for over a century, and there are a few things that have distinguished it as a most prestigious award. Firstly the Michelin inspectors anonymously visit restaurants and hotels.  There is no fanfare about their visit or the opportunity for the establishment to put on a special show for their benefit. Myth would have it that Michelin inspectors are sworn to secrecy, even to their own families! They also visit several times so that the judging criteria include marks for consistency, which happens to be one of my own biggest peeves with restaurants.  You go to a restaurant and have good food and service and then you either recommend it to someone or you make a return visit yourself to find that it’s not the same due to a different chef or a change in waiting staff.  With a Michelin star rated restaurant consistency is king.  Finally my favourite part of the Michelin ethos is that you can lose a star as well as earning one.  This gives great incentive to any establishment to keep the standards up.  Let’s face it no one likes to end up on the naughty step.  You can receive a one, two or three star Michelin rating, but all are given very sparingly.  A one star is given for a very, very good restaurant in its category.  Two stars mean, “excellent cooking, worth a detour” and three stars, which is relatively unheard of says “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.”  There are only about 85 restaurants in the whole world that actually have three Michelin stars.

The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore is well within driving distance from Tipperary and they have a bar food menu as well as a dinner menu, making it a lovely place for lunch.  Indeed if Michelin stars were handed out for location and decor alone The Cliff House Hotel would have scooped one on opening.  The entire building is sewn into the cliff face and sitting outside gives the impression of being on deck of a cruise liner.  The beautiful view alone is worth the trip. 

So what is it about the food at the Cliff House Hotel?  The head chef is Dutch native Martijn Kajuiter.  Martijn has previously worked under world class chefs such as Marco Pierre White, Michel Roux and Pierre Kauffman.  He proudly boasts that all produce used at the Cliff House is local and comes from within a thirty mile radius of the hotel but he takes it and then offers unusual combinations of flavours.  For example on the dinner menu you could choose a dish simply called ‘Local Lamb’ which sounds pretty basic until you read the description underneath:  Rump, Sweetbreads, Kidney Pie, Taggiasche Olives, Wild Spinach and Mushroom Cannelloni, Lamb Jus.  That’s definitely more than a slice of lamb and some veg.  Equally the dessert menu often features ‘Dark Chocolate 70%’, which is Mousse, Caramelized, Olive Oil, Semi Freddo, Maldon Sea Salt, Pistachio Ice Cream or how about a ‘Whiskey Baba’; Prunes, Earl Grey Tea, Salted Whiskey Caramel, Double Vanilla Ice Cream.  It would appear that Martijn’s gift is combining flavours, textures and tastes and ordinary local produce is transformed into something glamourous and unexpected.

While you may not be able to get to the Cliff House there is a cook book of the same name available.  While you can’t buy Martijn Kajuter’s years and years of experience you will be pleased to learn that you can, pretty much, buy all the ingredients for his recipes in the book pretty readily.  Most of the recipes are very accessible and thankfully there are no seaweeds imported from Japan or rare produce from some other far flung region; it’s all local. 

Finally, talking of good Cookbooks I received Roly’s Café and Bakery book by Paul Cartwright and Paulo Tullio as a Christmas gift.  I finally got around to cooking a few things from it and I can highly recommend it as a good working manual.  Vibrant salads, fantastic main courses, delicious desserts and some good home baking make it a good all round cook book if you want to do something fancy.  I cooked a birthday lunch from it for a friend, starter, main course and dessert and I was astounded that by just following the simply laid out recipes, the dishes actually resembled the accompanying pictures in the book and tasted equally good.  Again I would have to say that the key is, as always, good ingredients; a rule that you just cannot get away from.  With the best ingredients you often have to do very little with them to fool everyone into thinking you are a great cook.  In fact there is a very famous restaurant in California called Chez Panisse which was founded in 1971 by a lady called Alice Waters.  The main premise of the restaurant has never changed; it is a set menu but one that changes every night.  The ethos is that the best tasting food is organic and locally grown.  To that end they once famously served a peach for dessert.  It was just a peach on a plate, not cut, not sliced, just a peach.  The message; it was perfect as it was and nothing they could do would make it any better. 

While we all love the sophisticated and the glamourous, when it comes down to it you just can’t beat the simplicity of good food that is reared or grown with care and passion.  We are very fortunate to boast such local foods in Tipperary and neighbouring counties but it is up to us all to support such local food and ensure that it is there for future generations.

Try our recipe this week and order your corned beef online. www.jameswhelanbutchers.com

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