Love the Irish – The Cliff House Hotel / Ardmore / Ireland

House & Hotel Magazine features a great irish five star hotel in Ardmore / Ireland, indeed we love Ireland, the sea and the fantastic Cliff House Hotel in Waterford.
By the way, it has a fantastic spa.

The only five-star seaside hotel in Ireland gives you a great view over the beach, watching dolphins and the whole sealife.

It has been in existence since 1930 and was designed to service a tourist trade that showed its first glimmerings in Ardmore in the early 20th century among Ireland’s ‘big house’ families.
The Cliff House Hotel was originally called Kelly’s Hotel, named after the owner, Mr. Kelly from Connemara. Before rural electrification, Mr. Kelly relied on a wind generator. The grounds were terraced with gardens and lawns. A natural swimming pool with a diving board was carved out in the rocks below – and reinstated by the current owners. Mrs. Kelly’s nephew Frank Nugent came to Ardmore in 1936 and took over the hotel from his aunt, renaming it The Cliff House Hotel.
Many famous people stayed at The Cliff House Hotel throughout the century, from American first families to the author and playwright Hugh Leonard, poet laureate Seamus Heaney and many more.
The legendary O’Callaghan family from Mitchelstown purchased the hotel in 2005 and made an extraordinary investment.

For three years they gutted the building to reopen it in June 2008 as one of the most successful small hotels in Ireland.

Owner Gerri O’Callaghan directed the design with Garry Cohn while General Manager Adriaan Bartels established the hotel’s reputation for precision, old-world service delivered with characterful Irish warmth.

Perfect spot for swimming and golf.

The Cliff House Hotel

Our resto tip in Dublin: Patrick Guilbaud

The restaurant is located in 21 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin.

Patrick Guilbaud’s restaurant opened in 1981. He moved to Ireland after cooking in England for seven years.

The kitchen is in the hands of Guillaume Lebrun, who has worked here since the opening of the restaurant, after previously cooking in Paris.

The restaurant is on the ground floor of a boutique hotel in central Dublin. The room is airy and bright, with a high ceiling, patterned carpet, white walls and beige upholstery. The room can seat 70 diners at capacity, and there is private dining room in addition. Fourteen chefs and three kitchen porters were working in the kitchen today.

The wine list lands with a thud on the table in a large black binder. The cellar has around 20,000 bottles in all, with over 1,200 separate wines listed. Mark-ups seemed generally moderate.

A bread basket was filled with a wide range of breads, which are warmed up here, though the dough is supplied from an outside facility. The selection included baguette, bacon and onion roll, ciabatta, walnut and raisin roll, mixed seed bread and soda bread. These were nice. The meal began a single large roast scallop (from Castletownbere) with little cubes of parsley jelly, a light garlic emulsion and a Pedro Ximenes reduction. The scallop was high quality, caramelised with the help of a little sugar, cooked in butter and oil, and was cooked very carefully through. Yummy. This was followed by a tarte fine of assorted raw and marinated vegetables, on a base of St Tola, a soft goat cheese from County Clare, with a red pepper mustard. The peppers, radish, cucumber and baby mushrooms went well with the cheese, the red pepper mustard was a nice touch and the tart layer had good texture.
A cheese board had quite a wide choice of cheese, some from Ireland (such as Gubbeen) and some from France (Brie de Meaux, Munster etc). The hard and soft cheeses were in perfect condition. As a nice touch, the helpful sommelier brought, instead of a single glass of wine, four little glasses of different wines paired with each cheese that I had selected.

Nice experience, we are in love with the Irish…