The rooms in Kate and Andrew Cooke’s restaurant with rooms, Q.C’s, are the grooviest in all of Kerry. Killarney’s The Ross comes close when it comes to style, but the use of colour here, the shocks of the throws and the headboards against the calm colours of the walls and the wood, interplayed with the control of light through shutters and Velux windows, is an utter triumph. You don’t just want to stay in these rooms, you want to possess them, such is their astute luxury, their beyond-good finishing, their sense of escape.
One of the secrets of their success may be that the rooms and furnishings are slightly larger-than-normal-life – there is space for lying, lounging, bathing, sleeping, dreaming, sharing breakfast in the room. God dammit, you can even stretch out and do your pilates and tai chi. So, we want to walk the Kerry Way around Cahersiveen, then return here each evening for baths and then a scrummy dinner of ace seafood in the restaurant. The coolest escape of 2012, no doubt about it.
