The Cottage Restaurant

Sham Hanifa offers a very eclectic and provocative rendering of what happens on the plate when you elide Irish ingredients with the peripatetic culinary experience of a chef who hails from Malaysia. ‘Langkawi meets Leitrim’ as one writer put it, echoing the most quoted expression about Mr Hanifa’s cooking in The Cottage: ‘East meets West of Ireland’. No one else cooks like this guy, so expect a coriander crust on your rack of lamb; rice noodles under your fillet of turbot; lemongrass with your sea trout and chilli (chilli!) in your ice cream. Best of all, there is no confusion in this fusion: Mr Hanifa makes his dishes work superbly well, so the food eats cleanly and without gimmickry, and the two rooms of the restaurant are charming and welcoming.