Jean Perry explains it like this: ‘We get our fish from the Fish Station in Skibbereen, our meats from Tom Walsh’s butchers, and the vegetables we grow ourselves in the garden.’ If you needed to know what you have to do to run a restaurant that will attract attention from the Bridgestone Guides, then that is as succinct a summation as you can get. Of course, it helps that Ms Perry is also one of the great West Cork pioneers, a superlative grower, a serious thinker about food and creativity, and a person who can assemble a good family crew around herself and her husband, Peter, and daughters Tessa, Keziah and Jo-Jo. And then they know just what to do with that food, so an heirloom tomato will simply be sliced and put on the plate, along with some goat’s cheese fritters and some salad leaves, and together they will form the most perfect dish imaginable. Few people can dare to do things so simply, and yet so artfully, as you can see with a slice of the most sublime beetroot cake, or lamb chops with stuffed roast peppers, or rose petal ice cream. A summer’s lunch in the courtyard, under blue skies, is just bliss.
