After our recent jaunt to Kilkenny, our travels around the country continued down the M9 (and a bit further) to the picturesque village of Ardmore on the south coast of Waterford.  We were, of course, there to stay in The Cliff House Hotel and more importantly dine in their highly reputed restaurant.

After checking in to our beautiful room with amazing views of the Atlantic Ocean and enjoying a pleasant walk along the cliffs, we were hungry and so headed down for dinner. 

We plumbed for the eight course tasting menu and to our delight discovered that it was actually eight courses. A lot of restaurants in Ireland now are masquerading an á l carte menu as a tasting menu by, for example, taking three courses and adding an amuse bouche and a pre dessert and selling it as five course tasting menu. This is very cheap, very annoying and needs to stop. We have even seen cases where the amuse bouche and pre-dessert are given with the á la carte menu anyway, so all you get with the tasting menu is less choice for a higher price. Amuse bouches, sorbets and pre-desserts should be free, offered at the discretion of the chef and not part of the course count on a menu. Rant over and bravo to The Cliff House for doing it right.

The meal started brilliantly. Skilful and moreish amuse bouches and excellent breads opened the taste buds and set expectations high. The first few courses continued the excellence. Nicely cooked scallops with caviar and a Dutch salad was very good, but maybe they are two separate dishes and would have worked better if served in two parts; the Dutch salad first and then the scallops. A dish of beef tartare topped with an elderflower jelly with foie gras and broad beans was beautiful and married the tartate and foie gras well.  Next up was the best dish of the night. Salmon smoked perfectly in oak with a salmon ice cream and pickled vegetables showed a great respect of the ingredients, clarity, finesse and balance. It was a faultless dish.

At this stage of the meal the food had been top quality and the errors nothing more than minor quibbles. The anticipation of what might be coming next was nearly unbearable. Sadly though this standard did not continue. In fact, it dropped to a level that had us wondering if, half way through designing this tasting menu, the chef had to step out and asked a commis chef to finish the job. Dull halibut served with "ratatouille 2014" (at least we knew it was made this year), that overpowered the fish completely. This was followed by badly cooked lamb served with a chewy and inedible piece of sweatbread and gnocchi. The whole dish seemed a random selection of badly cooked ingredients. A cheese course next. Some rest-bite we thought - cheese is cheese after all and hard to mess up. We were wrong as this course was the worse of all. How to describe it? Well, imagine the texture of a split, light, foamy cream. It was quite repulsive and was not redeemed by the somewhat pleasant after-taste that comes sometime later. The idea of serving a lighter take on a cheese course in the summer is a good one, but this is certainly not how to go about it.

Desserts next and we are hoping the chef had stepped back in or the pastry chef had never left. First up was a strawberry dish that was served with far too much foam. The strawberries themselves were unremarkable and it was a bit sedentary. Thankfully the meal ended on a high note with an addictive chocolate and coffee serving. It demonstrated good chocolate work and managed to be both decadent and light. 

The tasting menu was served with pairing wines, many of which from countries that generally don't make it on to restaurant wine list, such as Lebanon, Morocco and Greece. Some of the wines were very good and matched the food quite well, but the Languedoc sparkling rosé paired with the desserts tasted cheap and medicinal. 
The staff and service were more-or-less faultless and would not be out of place in any high end restaurant.

It is rare to have a meal that had such highs and such lows. The food highlighted some excellent seasonal Irish produce and they were mingled well with the Dutch influence of Chef Martijn Kajuiter. The cookery at times showed skill, precision, balance and finesse, but at other times, these attributes were missing with clumsy and careless cooking. The presentation of most dishes was outstanding, but that crossed the line into style-over-substance on poor dishes.

In all we left with frustration. How can a kitchen produce such excellence on the same menu as such failure. Regardless, we saw enough to see that on its day this restaurant could delight, and so, a return visit is not off the cards.

Click here for a more recent review of Campagne.
Click here for a more recent review of Lady Helen.

We have been promising to get out of Dublin a bit more this year and sample more restaurants from around the country. Well, finally we made a couple of journeys down to Kilkenny to try Lady Helen at Mount Juliet and Campagne near the centre of Kilkenny.

First up was a night in Mount Juliet. We like staycations and take one several times a year, so the idea of going to a beautiful hotel, with one of the best golf courses in Ireland plus the possibility of an excellent restaurant was an exciting prospect.

Driving up the long avenue towards Mount Juliet House it is easy to see that the grounds are being well cared for - something that cannot be said for other resorts of this type in Ireland over the last few years. Mount Juliet House itself still has the old world charm and luxury. Our room was extremely comfortable and well furnished, but with the odd sign of ageing creeping in. The staff throughout the hotel were friendly and welcoming. All this got our hopes up for a great meal when we went down for dinner in the front room of this old Georgian Manor house. 

In a hotel that has kept the feeling of a bygone time, with their beautifully preserved lobby, bar and drawing rooms, you would be forgiven for expecting the food to be traditional and maybe even a bit safe. But the food in Lady Helen Restaurant was more modern than the surroundings.
Many courses were seasonal and, in the main, light, fresh and befitting of a hot summer's night. The first two courses demonstrated this well. An elevated beetroot and goats cheese salad was a great start, but despite being served with some well measured components, maybe needed a little something extra to lift it to more than just a beetroot and goats cheese salad. The next course was just as good, but with lobster that was just a little tough and not as soft as it should be.

The best dish was maybe the most technical and most challenging. Turbot, foie gras and beluga lentils are not easy ingredients to marry. It would be easy for the turbot to get lost with the foie gras and, even more so, with the strong taste of lentils. But the delicate fish with the high quality, almost sweet, foie gras, worked wonderfully with the earthiness of the lentils.

The next dish divided our opinion slightly. We agreed that the duck breast was perfectly cooked and beautifully tender, but it was the accompaniments that had us squabbling. Bulgar wheat, Ras el Hanout and rhubarb was, for one of us, too sharp and powerful for the duck, but, for the other, worked very well. You will have to make your own mind up on that one!

The two desserts on our tasting menu were very good. A baked lemon cream was light and cleansing, served with lovely a goats curd parfait. We usually are not a fan of fruit sorbets with a lemon based dessert, but the raspberry sorbet worked, especially with the yuzu gel. A second dessert of strawberries (farmed and wild) and pistachio was summery and light - a nice end to a meal.

The amuse bouche of lobster veloute and crab cake was just ok. A carrot sorbet and mandarin jelly was clever and the petit fours were excellent.

The use of seasonal regional food was scattered throughout the menu, with beetroot, rhubarb, strawberries, lobster all making an appearance. These combined well with international ingredients like lentils, foie gras, mandarin, pistachio and yuzu. 

In all it was a very good meal without many errors. However there was lack of 'wow' in some of the dishes and we left thinking that it was a little bit reserved. The skill and technique in the kitchen is clear and seemingly abundant, so there maybe still room for the food to be pushed that a little bit further.  But, we will certainly be back.

Our second visit in Kilkenny was to Campagne - a restaurant near the heart of Kilkenny serving French food. The food here ranged between good and poor. The starters, one of Foie Gras and one of Quail were of high quality, with the quail  in particular being perfectly cooked, showing a lightness of touch and finesse. 
The desserts were not too bad either. A passion fruit and chocolate Chiboust was refreshing, but a little bit annoying to eat as the chocolate layer was thick and hard to cut through. It was also large and got a little bit boring after a while. The other dessert of chocolate tarte, vanilla ice cream and raspberries was tasty, but unremarkable.

It was the two very poor main courses that let Campagne down though.  Duck that was overcooked served with tasteless baby turnips and salty cabbage. The dish was redeemed slightly by a very nice duck sausage. The other main was Herefood Beef which was unevenly cooked - ordered rare, but was rare in parts and medium in others. The mains were served with terrible, grainy mashed potatoes - the sort that were served by Irish housewives up and down the country, but shouldn't be seen anywhere near a professional kitchen.

Campagne, at best, is a good bistro with excellent staff and worth a visit if you find yourself in the Kilkenny for the night, but it would be hard for us to return to Kilkenny and not stay in Mount Juliet.