We were so impressed by the exposition of the Cheeseboard in Browns, that we recorded it. You can hear it in the Soundbite above. If any restaurant offers a better explanation of a cheeseboard, we have yet to hear it.
Brown’s of Bond’s Hill
First things first: Ian Orr isn’t simply cooking the best food in Derry right now, he is cooking some of the best food in Ireland right now.
Browns delivers some of the most interesting, nuanced and involving contemporary cooking that you will find anywhere, yet what is instructive about Ian Orr is that his cooking is not at all didactic. His food is not grandstanding, it’s not masculine, he cooks for pleasure and comfort, not to show off or demonstrate what a hot shot he is.
With each detail of each dish - the texture of pork belly, the texture of panna cotta, the salinity of brown shrimp with halibut, the truffle aroma with Parmesan risotto, the softness of gnocchi with veal – he is aiming to make the dish as thorough and as convincing and as delicious as he possibly can.
He is in the canon of great Northern chefs who have their own style – Rankin, Deane, Price, Millar, Millar, McKenna, McCann – a style which these cooks have fashioned from myriad influences, and each dish he sends out signals his style quietly but decisively.
He will seize on the modern fashion for weird gear – slow cooked pork neck, for example – but by matching it with a toffee apple purée, he makes it all his own. The pine nut mayonnaise with some Haven Smoke House smoked beef makes it an Ian Orr dish, and nobody else’s.
He seems a younger man today than a decade ago, which is some going given the pressure of work he puts himself through. Every dish in Brown’s speaks of hard work, and the opening of the superb Brown’s in Town can only have added to his workload. But he is fortunate in that his team are amongst the very best – confident yet unassuming, brilliant and relaxed at their job – and as if all this excellence wasn’t enough, the value for money in Brown’s is simply incredible, given the tenor and authority of this cooking.
Brown’s is shifting the zeitgeist of Northern Irish cooking west of the River Bann. The guys in Belfast should be well worried.
Brown’s in Town
Swishness is not what you associate with a city like Derry.
Yet here is Brown’s in Town, Ian Orr’s second restaurant, partner to Brown’s of Bond’s Hill, and it is indubitably swish. Swish in the way Roscoff was swish back in 1989. Swish in the way Shanks was back in 1995. Swish in the way James Street South is. It’s a good swishness because it isn’t blowsy or brash: it’s subtle and restrained and, thereby, all the better, all the more alluring.
It’s the kind of room that makes you want to party, the kind of restaurant that shouts: restaurant! You might find yourself settling into one of those gorgeous booths and find, suddenly, that it is several hours and courses and bottles later, and what a good time everyone is having.
The cooking is so on-the-money it stops you in your tracks. Its precision and focus reminds us of the work of the late Robbie Millar, with whom Ian Orr worked in Shanks. The flavours are bright and vivid, starting with a purple carrot soup that is a carrot elixir, but the team don’t overlook texture, and the meltingness of the Brown’s in Town pork belly with their signature toffee apple purée is stunning.
They do marvellous things with vegetables – carrot and fennel salad with beef ribs; beer-braised onions with fillet steak – so the fennel and spinach that partner with some salmon are terrific, and when they turn their attention to the sweet things they show that the restraint of the room finds its way onto the plates, for the dark chocolate and orange tart with brown butter ice cream is a wow! because it is so tightly restrained.
As it is in Brown’s of Bond’s Hill, so it is in Brown’s in Town: the value for money here is unbeatable, and the staff have their work down pat.
