We fetched up at the Cashel House Hotel in Connemara for dinner and a couple of days' holiday, but first things first. Determined to earn the four-course feast we were booked in for, we hauled on the walking boots and set off to walk up the hill behind the house. Like all hills, it's devious. What looked like a gentle incline turned out to be a long haul, a whole series of mock summits before it finally flattened out and gave us the most magical view of the Twelve Bens.
Back down again and feeling virtuous, we strolled to the local pub where the only other customers were two fishermen and a French couple who we'd watched lowering themselves very gingerly from a pair of hired bikes outside.
They weren't staying at Cashel House, but lots of other French people were. Cashel House has been enormously popular with the French since Charles de Gaulle stayed there for a two-week holiday in 1969. There are several souvenirs of him framed in the hallway, including a photograph of a huddle of people on a beach, being blasted by the weather, Connemara style. It could have been de Gaulle and his party or it could have been any number of people who have tried Connemara out of season and found themselves permanently drenched and blown about by the elements. Despite the weather - and it was pretty wet the weekend we visited - the French keep coming to Cashel House Hotel and quite a few of the serving staff are French too, adding extra flair to this charming Irish house.
Most charming of all is the owner, Kay McEvilly, a sturdy, attractive woman who tours the diningroom at breakfast and dinner, and in between is never far from the cubby-hole reception desk where you can see right through to the wine cellar. The secret of her establishment is high maintenance. Step in the hall and you're standing on inch-thick V'Voske Joyce carpet. The drawingroom may look like a cosy, old-fashioned sort of room, but the sofas and armchairs are blissfully comfortable, light is filtered through expensive lampshades, the furniture gleams with polish and the fires are going all day long.
Our room was charming and comfortable, with a huge bed and huge windows
overlooking the front garden, and we got thick bath-robes, plus a heap of magazines on a table outside the door. There was mineral water and a fruit plate standing by, as well as tea and coffee - though the latter was just sachets of nasty Nescafe.
Downstairs again we went straight to the diningroom, which was filling up early with residents and well-heeled weekenders with cottages in the area.
We were seated in the large conservatory, a few steps down from the diningroom. It's a luxurious, restful room, with pale-green papered walls and chintz curtains. We chose a window table to admire the garden in the dusk and found our spot draught-free. The tables are laid with white lawn tablemats, delicately embroidered. Delicacy is a theme that persists throughout the meal.
Flavours are mild and comforting, rather than out to impress, and portions are just enough - though maybe not for big eaters. The courses were well-balanced, nothing was too heavy and oils had been used sparingly. This was French good sense meeting Irish produce, with nothing to bring on a crise de foie.
There's no a la carte menu, but the set menu, at £32, is surprisingly long, with nine or 10 main-course choices. You can have a shorter version, without the starter, for £27.50, or a deluxe version with lobster, for £10 extra. There's a new menu every night. Our menu included warm lobster and brill mousse with spinach and white wine sauce, a goat's cheese and spring onion tart and a terrine of foie gras as starters, while the main courses began with sirloin of beef crusted with horseradish and thyme, took in traditional roast stuffed turkey and sauteed fillet of ostrich along the way, and tailed off with several fish dishes, ranging from grilled local monkfish with a red pepper sauce to a simple Dover sole on the bone with herb butter.
The wine list is one of those hefty books in which after a page or two of lesser priced wines you're off in the deep end with big-name French wines sporting lots of zeros in the price. I started with smoked Cornamona salmon and got three translucent slices on a black plate. It tasted good, but not as good the excellent stuff we had at Morans of the Weir the previous day.
David had hot kipper pate, which arrived in a steaming castle, surrounded by a creamy sauce. It was warm and mildly flavoured and went very well with the thinly-sliced brown bread we had chosen from a basket filled with raisin bread, tomato bread and tiny white rolls.
Soup - mushroom and vegetable for me, fish for David - came in small china bowls with tiny roses rioting around them. Both soups tasted fresh and light. David's soup had lots of chunks of fish and shellfish, but the rouille that came with it was disappoint. Again the flavour was mild, without the blast of garlic and chilli that it is supposed to have.
Connemara lamb, to follow, came in disappointingly thin slices that cooled rapidly on the plate. Perfectly tender, but gone in a flash. My free-range chicken, with a lemon butter sauce and rice, was nicely piquant. Vegetables were extremely fresh, al dente and generous, but the potatoes were even better. Small baked potatoes wrapped in foil were the healthy option but all around us people were digging in to dishes of gratin potatoes laden with butter and cream and so did we. The diningroom was almost full and Kay McEvilly was circulating, talking to people as though they were old friends. The weather was the main topic of conversation, as she reassured table after table that it would be much brighter and maybe a little less wet the following day.
For dessert, David had home-made apple tart with a commendably thin crust and a filling of thinly sliced apple, with little or no sugar added. A small scoop of home-made vanilla ice cream on the side was all it needed. My cheese plate had seven or eight slivers of different cheeses, morsels really, and some extremely thin home-made crackers. One or two wedges of cheese might have looked more appealing and been more satisfying to eat. We could have lingered as long as we wished in the diningroom and there was none of that pressure that you get in so many hotel diningrooms to clear out so they can set up for breakfast.
We took coffee in the drawingroom where the hushed, stilted atmosphere peculiar to country-house hotels prevailed. We left two days' later, feeling that we had had a real holiday and we didn't leave empty-handed. Having admired the crocosmia throughout the woodland garden, Kay McEvilly took a spade and dug up a heap of bulbs for us to take away.
Our dinner bill came to around £100 including a decent bottle of Australian white and a perfect champagne cocktail to start with.
Cashel House Hotel, Cashel, Connemara, Co Galway. Tel 095-31001.
