(30 Jan 2009)
Getting out of Dublin at the weekend is a bit
like getting out of Alcatraz. (Alcatraz was easier, that’s
all). No matter how early you leave, you’re doomed to
sit in traffic jams every step of the way. You’ll encounter
a sea of cars stretching for miles, South, East, and West
– engines idling, tempers flaring, the weekend in tatters
before it’s even begun. So I would say to you, “Don’t
leave home at the weekend. Stay home. Stay at home”.
Or I would say that were it not for Zuni. Because Zuni means
you must get in that car, you must creep to Newland’s
Cross. You must curse your way through Naas, have a nervous
breakdown in Kilcullen, cry in Carlow and finally reach Kilkenny.
Zuni is on Patrick’s Street in Kilkenny
and so discreet you may need several drive-by’s to spot
it. It looks as though it arrived fully formed from some chic
little street in Soho. You enter through the bar with its
gleaming wood, its clean lines and elegant cream cushions
– and on into reception. Beyond you can see the restaurant
- a big airy roomful of light with well-spaced tables, glistening
crystal and starched napery. In your room, the spare elegance
and Philippe Starck-like austerity are again in evidence.
Thick bands of wood around the mirror, perfectly placed light
fittings and the bed – a huge billow of white no particle
of which has ever touched another human being. Really nice
if you get queasy when you fall to pondering how many hands
( and whose) have tugged at your hotel blankets!
The bathroom is small but perfectly formed with
a shower that drills holes in your head and does wonders for
your “back-seat driver’s back. (it’s pretty
good for driver’s back as well.) Then you go down to
dinner. The other diners are a mixture of the feverishly smart
choosing their wine as though they may have to defend their
choice on national television and the less reverent who accompany
their dinner with glasses of coke and pints of beer. Along
one long wall, the kitchen is open to the world, a bit of
theatre to enjoy while you eat. No chance of anyone spitting
in your soup here! Delicious breads appear immediately. I
started with the Thai Flavoured Seafood Salad with Sweet Chilli
Vinegar which was artfully flavoured, tart and spicy –
the perfect prelude to a Meat Antipasti which arrived on a
slate (that’s right- the sort you put on roofs) and
was glistening with oil and speckled with olives. The slate
was a drift of good things – Parma Ham, salami, bruschetta
piled with a variety of grilled vegetables – super.
For our main courses I had the Loin of Lamb,
Channa Masala and Baby Spinach. The lamb was meltingly tender,
the beans delivering tiny explosions of spice with every mouthful.
He had the Roasted Cod on Pancetta Chowder. The cod was roasted
to golden perfection but I wasn’t sure about the chowder
which looked like watery mashed potato. Then I tasted it.
Amazing! I ended up filching rather a lot actually. We didn’t
have wine as we were off to a wedding in Waterford the following
day and wanted to be wide-awake for it but the list, while
small, is interesting and carefully selected. Each wine has
a short, to-the-point note (New Zealand Framingham –
full and rich with tropical fruits. A real find”) rather
than those pompous, turgid over-wraught paragraphs that make
one want to throw up.
We finished with excellent ice-creams for him
coffees and then staggered out into the night to try and work
off some of the calories. Oh, and by the way, don’t
have a tantrum if the exact dishes I have described aren’t
available because I’m told they’ve just changed
their menu. An excellent excuse for a return journey! Next
morning, we had coffee in the room. (They don’t do breakfast
in the bedrooms yet – boo- hoo!) and then went down
to the dining room where he had poached eggs, bacon, sausages,
puddings – all freshly cooked and I had a fruit platter
with, amongst other things, mango, strawberries, blueberries
and orange segments plus a cafetiere of good coffee –
oh yes, and The Weekend which someone very decently went out
to fetch for us Bliss! Oh God! This is all beginning to sound
a bit gushing. I’d better think of something negative
to off-set it. Well, my wholewheat toast at breakfast was
of the sliced pan variety when I’d rather hoped for
more of the breads they’d served at dinner. Still, just
a tiny niggle.
Zuni is owned by two twin sisters, Paula and Sandra and their
husbands Paul Byrne and Alan McDonald. They’ve been
in the catering trade all their lives, working as far afield
as Australia and America and that’s how they all met.
And, while they slaved away in other people’s restaurants,
they wove a dream of returning to Kilkenny and establishing
an hotel that would be exactly the way they wanted it. That
it would look a certain way, have a very particular philosophy
about the food, the atmosphere, the whole experience of dining
out. It took years to make that dream come true but come true
it did and now Zuni is an established part of Kilkenny.
It’s a lovely place, enthusiastically
and carefully run by the two couples – three couples
if you count chefs William Tremewan and his wife Michelle
and we left reluctantly. And the cost of all this - bed and
breakfast for two plus a superb dinner? £130.25 plus
service. Can’t see that lasting, can you?
So gird your loins and head this minute for Newland’s
Cross. You can always get out occasionally and amble along
beside the car during the slow bits while you enjoy a quiet
cigarette. That’s what I did anyway. (Awkward if you’re
the driver of course).