Restaurant Review

This Megabytes Review features two new discoveries taken from the new Bridgestone 2004 100 Best Guides.

Slatefort House
Maura & Rosario Winters
Slatefort, Bullaun,
Loughrea
County Galway
Tel: (091) 870 667

Slatefort House is kind of nowhere. We tried to find a B&B near to the restaurant: there aren't any. Yet, on a weekend night, this east Galway secret will be heaving with locals, all of whom behave as if they have been coming here for years, so relaxed is their demeanour.

They are relaxed because Slatefort has that adorable laissez-faire ambience of the best Italian restaurants, which is just what this is. It looks and feels like a real Italian restaurant, and the cooking makes no compromises: where else will you enjoy homemade pasta stuffed with sea bass in a light fish sauce, or a perfect lettuce sauce with breast of duck. Simple vegetable garnishes, some fruits poached in wine for dessert, excellent coffee, a modest bill: sorry, are we in Piedmont, or Liguria? We're near Loughrea? Aye, right. Pull the other one.

Maura and Rosario keep things on track with a shy, expert diffidence, and the somewhat surreal nature of the location and the style only adds to the enjoyment. Terrific.

The Olde Post Inn
Tara McCann & Gearoid Lynch
Cloverhill, Butler's Bridge
County Cavan
Tel: (047) 55555 Fax: 55111
gearoidlynch@eircom.net
www.theoldepostinn.com

A young couple running a restaurant with rooms, and putting body and soul into their work and their cooking, is one of those sights to melt a critic's heart. So it is with Tara and Gearoid in the sweet little Olde Post Inn in Cloverhill, a few miles out of Cavan town.

When they aren't packing them in at the weekends ­ book well in advance for Sunday lunch or you won't get a table ­ and running the place with great efficiency during the week, they are likely to have the paint brushes out doing up one of the rooms, or smartening up the dining rooms. This is a hands-on, do-everything operation, with two young people determined to make a success of their joint venture.

Mr Lynch's excellent, mature cookery is the secret ingredient of the OP: julienne of dover sole with asparagus is cheffy and clever, home-smoked guinea fowl with Puy lentils is splendid, whilst a warm mango tart is spot on. Book a room and make the most of this romantic spot.