When we have written about Brook’s Hotel in the past, we have tended to concentrate on the extrordinary standards of service that the hotel’s staff deliver for guests. This has led us to overlook the stellar quality of the cooking from chef Patrick McLarnon and his team, so it’s about time that we put that right: the food in Brook’s is ace, a sympathetic, modest modern Irish cuisine that is beautifully achieved, and which has a sense of true, holistic goodness to it.
Taste these flavours and you won’t be surprised to hear that Mr McLarnon isn’t just a cook, he is also a man who has an allotment in order to grow his own vegetables, and his food has the earthy qualities you would expect from a man who knows the true value of pure, undiluted flavours, whether he is making a navarin of Irish lamb, or baking the most wonderful Xmas cake, or ensuring that every element of an Irish breakfast is as fine as it can be. Pastry chef Emily Kay is also a star-in-waiting, so on no account miss her wonderful work.
