There is always the danger with fine dining that the room is going to be too hushed, the prices too terrifying and that really, when the time comes, it just seems like too much of a faff to get glammed up, especially when you’re relaxing on your holliers. Although this is not the case, I would imagine, if you’re staying somewhere beautiful like Gregans Castle with its stunning views out over the Burren in Co Clare.
The good news is you don’t have to stay at Gregans Castle to dine there, and I have a good pal to thank for undertaking the email and phone call duties to ensure my booking as a non-resident remained anonymous.
You could describe the diningroom as formal – white linen, generous tables and serving stations – but there’s a lightness to it, with tables looking out into the garden. It feels quite special. We are shown to the side room, which is equally comfortable, but our view is of greenery rather than the panoramic stretch of karst.
The €95 menu makes for pleasant reading, starting with canapés and offering three options for the starters, mains and dessert, with a €10 supplement for cheese. On the wine list, it’s worth chatting with the sommelier if you want to unearth something at the more affordable end. We go for Bisanzio Trebbiano (€39), a white from the Abruzzo region of Italy.
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Breads arrive, followed by clever canapés. Flaggy Shore oysters on the half shell are lightly dressed. They have a delicate hum of koji or something deliciously savoury along those lines. There’s a delicate bite of rösti, and a small white bowl billows with warm miso velouté, which foams ethereally over small pieces of smoked eel. It is divine.
For starters, Atlantic scallops have been sliced, cured and dressed with rhubarb, fennel and dashi. In the middle, a mousseline made from the scallop offcuts has been topped with trout roe and an opaque green disc. It wears its layers of technique lightly, the focus being purely on taste. For our other starter, spaetzle, those wonderful Austrian dumplings that you seldom see on menus here, are light, green-hued from wild garlic and utterly delicious with crispy pieces of cheese, schimeji mushrooms and kale in a Coolea cheese sauce.
Roast halibut is perfectly cooked, served with a beurre blanc which has just a hint of sweetness and brine from local mussels. There are so many machinations used in fine dining to add a sense of discovery and surprise to a dish – smoking hay, dry ice, a delicate savoury tuille dusted with dehydrated, blitzed and finely sieved powder – but here, the discovery lies in classic simplicity.
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The unfurling of a barely poached salad leaf reveals everything that has just pushed through the soil of the kitchen garden – sweet peas and baby broad beans – which are bathed in butter and so transcendentally delicious that they may just be the most beautiful mouthful I will encounter all summer.
The crisp skin of roast Thornhill duck has been beautifully rendered, the duck breast just a little beyond pink, neatly sidestepping the ferric taste of a bird that is too rare, with an intense jus and smoked beetroot adding depth.
For dessert, the sharpness of garden rhubarb works beautifully with a cardamom rice pudding and crisp matcha tea wafer, with ginger adding nuance. Our second dessert is simpler, a burnt white chocolate panna cotta scented with hibiscus and meadowsweet and served with plum jelly and compote.
Gregans Castle has a reputation for attracting some of the country’s most talented chefs. Mickael Viljanen headed up the kitchen before he landed his first Michelin star at the Greenhouse in Dublin, and more recently Robbie MacCauley, who landed a Michelin star for his newly opened Homestead Cottage, was at the helm.
The chef now manning the stoves is Jonathan Farrell. He comes with considerable form. Having worked in some of Copenhagen’s top restaurants – including Michelin-starred Amass and Relae and in Simon Rogan’s three-Michelin-star L’Enclume restaurant in England’s Lake District – he spent three years as the sous chef at Michelin-starred Bastible in Dublin before taking up his recent position.
There’s nothing simple about what’s happening here, but it feels seamless, with technique and skill neatly woven through every dish, bringing clarity and restraint. It is a textbook Michelin star experience in the nicest possible way, and I would say a dead cert for a gong in 2025.
Dinner for two with a bottle of wine was €229.
- The verdict: 9/10 Michelin-star level food in a beautiful diningroom.
- Food provenance: Glenmar, CS Fish, Pat O’Connor beef, Iona Farm vegetables, La Rousse.
- Vegetarian options: One starter and main, eg wild garlic spaetzle and barbecued glazed celeriac with pearl barley.
- Wheelchair access: Fully accessible with an accessible toilet.
- Music: A room of pleasant chatter.
