Chef Patron
Órla Ní Bhriain
Twelve years in other people’s kitchens taught her what she wanted. This room is the argument.
Órla grew up over her grandmother’s pub in Kinsale, where the kitchen ran on whatever the boats brought in and whatever the garden gave up. She has said more than once that she has been trying to cook that food ever since, just with better knives.
She left for London at nineteen and spent four years on fish, then four more on sauce, in kitchens where the pass was a place people got shouted at. She learned technique there and decided she wanted none of the rest of it.
She came home in 2014 with a lease on a derelict building on Emmet Place and an idea that a serious kitchen could also be a kind one. The dining room opened that October with thirty covers and a menu that changed daily because the supplier list was two farmers and a fisherman.
It changes daily still. The suppliers now number forty-one, all of them within ninety minutes of the door, and every one of them is named on the back of the menu.
How she thinks about it
Buy better, do less
A turbot landed that morning needs heat, butter and restraint. Most of what we call cooking is an attempt to rescue an ingredient we should not have bought.
Fire is an ingredient
The oak hearth is not decoration. Smoke, char and the smell of a room where something is burning properly — that is half of why people book a table.
Nobody shouts
The best service I ever worked was silent. A kitchen that runs on fear makes tense food. You can taste it.
If she were eating here
The three she would order herself
Roast Turbot on the Bone
€38The finest fish in these waters, roasted whole on the bone and carved at the table.
White Burgundy — Meursault if the evening allows
Seared Scallops
€19Hand-dived, caramelised hard on one side only, with black pudding and a cider butter.
Chablis 1er Cru — enough weight for the butter, enough acid for the pudding
Dark Chocolate Fondant
€12Seventy per cent Valrhona, salted caramel centre, fourteen minutes from order to table.
Maury, or a 20-year tawny
The tasting menu
Five courses,
one evening
Órla writes it the afternoon it is served. €95 a head, or €160 with the cellar pairing beside it.
- I
Oyster & Cucumber
Cold, clean, and over in two mouthfuls. It resets the palate and tells you what kind of evening this is going to be.
Grower Champagne, Blanc de Blancs
- II
Turbot, Seaweed Butter
The fish course is the one Órla will not change. Bone-in, basted, and carved where you can see it.
Chablis 1er Cru, Fourchaume
- III
Hearth-Roast Lamb
Kerry lamb, wild garlic, and a jus reduced from the bones of the same animal. The room quietens for this one.
Northern Rhône Syrah
- IV
Buttermilk & Rhubarb
Sharp where the lamb was rich. The pastry section builds it to order, so it arrives still cold.
Moscato d’Asti
- V
Whiskey & Chocolate
A single pot still, fifteen years old, and one square of something very dark. Then we leave you alone.
Redbreast 15
Six seats
Eat at the pass,
where it happens
Six stools at the kitchen counter, a menu decided that afternoon, and Órla talking you through each course as it lands. Booked about three weeks ahead, and worth the wait.
Ask about the chef's table