Before we talk about chef Ollie O’Regan’s beautiful cooking in the lovely Mulranny Park, we must take a little detour to mention that the brown bread cooked in the hotel by Helen is one of the best breads we have encountered in recent years. Stop by the hotel, pull up a lunchtime chair in the bar, order a bowl of chowder and brown bread, and you will enjoy one of the best lunches in the West. In the beautiful Nephin restaurant, Ollie O’Regan has been building his team and his talent since the hotel opened, and his cooking is marvellously sure, due in no small part to the fine ingredients from great producers who now surround the hotel.
He does wonders with Gerry Hassett’s smoked Clare Island salmon, transforms Sean Kelly’s Mayo lamb into a taste masterpiece, makes a dish of Clew Bay scallops with glazed pork belly that is so good you would get up in the middle of the night to eat it, and his sympathetic treatment of the superb Curraun Blue trout served with roast ceps is grandstanding cooking. The Nephin is one of the happiest dining rooms we know, and superb service completes one of the Best of the West. Dermot Madigan and his team are an inspiring and inspired bunch, and their wonderful Greenway initiative is one of the most brilliant innovations in Irish hospitality.
