Some restaurant kitchens have a “fish supplier”. Ours has a phone full of fishermen. When chef Martin McCormack opens the kitchen each morning, the first calls of the day are to the boats — what came in last night, what is on ice, what is on the way.
A 20-minute supply chain
Most of the seafood on our menu travels less than 20 minutes from the boat to our pass. Mussels and oysters come from the bays around Castlecove and Sneem. Crab and lobster from the pots out past Derrynane Harbour. Mackerel, pollock and the occasional turbot from boats out of Caherdaniel. When the cod or hake aren’t running locally we look slightly further afield to Cromane or Dingle — never beyond Kerry, never frozen.
The menu writes itself
This is why our specials board is so often a different colour to the printed menu. Martin’s view is straightforward: write the dishes around whatever the boats have caught, not the other way around. It means a “Daily Fish” can be five different things in a week. It also means the meal you eat on Wednesday night will be a meal nobody has eaten before in exactly that form.
More than fish
The same principle runs through the rest of the menu. Hereford beef from a local butcher who knows every farmer by name; Kerry lamb from the hill flocks above the village; eggs from a small farm a mile up the road; cheeses from a small handful of farmhouse producers — Knockanore, Killaloe, Coolea — whose work tastes properly of the south west.
Come hungry
If you want a window into how a coastal kitchen really runs, ask Martin or one of the team about the day’s catch when you sit down for dinner. We will happily talk you through what’s on, where it came from, and who fished it. It is one of the small pleasures of eating somewhere where the supply chain is short enough to remember by name.
