The deep water beside the pier at Screebe House is turf-brown like tea. The air has the clean briney waft of the west and later we’ll see three wild swans fly across all the beauty. This is a backwater in the best sense. Screebe House is a former hunting lodge near Rosmuc in the puddle-lovely heart of the Connemara Gaeltacht. A reader’s message put it on my map last summer. “You have to check out the restaurant,” he said. “The tasting menu prepared by chef Damien is absolutely outstanding.”
It took another two recommendations and a wait to get a booking (this is a busy place) but here we are, sitting on the stone pier in warm sunshine, glad we came.
Except for one wrinkle. The owners of the house are here with friends so it feels, at times, like we're unscripted extras in a remake of Peter's Friends.
But the staff couldn’t be nicer and they mount an industrial-strength charm offensive. The restaurant is in a stone-floored glass structure built on to the front of the house overlooking the inlet. The view would be gorgeous but for the window frames. A wedge of PVC sits precisely in our sightline so you have to slump or stretch to see sea. It’s the kind of thing that would give Dermot Bannon a canniption.
The caramel leather chairs are comfortable (they’ll need to be – we’re here for a while) and there’s gleaming white linen on the table. The tasting menu starts with suitably thrilling snacks: a puffed beef tendon (the only meat that will feature tonight) topped with tangy blobs of egg yolk and sambai vinegar, a Japanese wonder condiment that combines tang with meaty broth. There’s squid coated in a grainy black skin of its own ink and Goatsbridge trout roe on a nori crisp with a snow of horseradish, which is more muted muffle than root with a kick.
Nordic food gods
Courses come in beautiful glazed bowls or sitting on simple wooden plates like offerings to the Nordic food gods. My favourite is the smoked eel, small chunks of smoky flesh on a puddle of creamy potato puree and a sweet broth, not unlike the colour of the sea outside. There are crispy shallots here too and purslane, a foraged weed which tastes of salt and fresh air. Some of the courses are a couple of mouthfuls but that’s fine. Because there are a lot of courses.
There is a sweet-fleshed langoustine freed from its shell and sitting in buttery carrot puree with “aged carrots”, gorgeous fermented rounds on top and two scurvy grass flowers finishing the whole lovely plate. Scallop comes sashimi style, the flesh slashed into morsels dotted with rounds of apple and kohl rabi mandolined so thin they’re like a vegetable X-ray. It’s finished with an apple and dill dashi, which begs to be finished with a finger swipe. It’s a plate that puts the phoarr into raw. Damien Ring is a chef who knows what to do with fish. He came here from the kitchen at Ashford Castle and also cooked at L’Enclume.
Hake has been fried butter-crisp, but so briefly that the flesh underneath is still quivering pinkly, so fresh it’s almost swimming. There are razor clams sliced tiny in the sauce along with new baby peas and pea shoots. There’s one okay dessert (or “pre-dessert” if you speak tasting menu English). It’s Finnerty’s heather honey turned into a tuile on top of forced rhubarb, a honeycomb parfait and house ricotta. Then there is a stellar plate. Araguani sounds like something Mrs Doyle would say but it’s the chocolate made from two Venezuelan cocoa beans. And it will knock every other chocolate you’ve had into the ha’penny place. Ring turns it into eye-rollingly good mousse piped on the plate like a flower and surrounded with disks of salt caramel parfait, a yuzu jelly and a fresh sharp sheeps’ yoghurt sorbet to bleat along with the tangy notes of the chocolate. It’s a real contender for dessert of the year.
Star anise marshmallow
The smarts are in the small things like the treat at the end: a pocket of jerusalem artichoke skin-baked crisp and then filled with chocolate parfait and finished with grated walnut. It’s the fine dining version of tipping a bag of Revels into a bag of Tayto. And there’s a lovely star anise marshmallow topped with blobs of sea buckthorn. But hold the ticker tape parade. Tragically the last mouthful is so off-note as to be memorably bad. It’s puffed amaranth (that trendy grain) on a rosemary and mead crisp. Sounds great. Tastes only of blue mould, like the last slice of bread left in a sweaty bag while you went away on holiday.
My other niggle? They need to up the pace. I’m a fan of slow but the lengthy lulls between courses feel saggy rather than relaxing. But on balance it wasn’t a wild goose chase. The food at Screebe House is a proper treat in a beautiful place.
Dinner for two including water, two glasses of wine and a 10 per cent service charge came to €176
Screebe House, Rosmuc, Connemara, Co Galway (091) 574 110
Verdict: 8/10. Move over Pearse’s cottage Rosmuc has itself a destination restaurant
Facilities: Fine
Music: Classical changed to R&B after the owners had dined
Food provenance: Finnerty’s honey and Goatsbridge trout roe among the producers name-checked
Vegetarian options: Need to be requested
Wheelchair access: Yes
