Around Loop Head, in south County Clare, you can meet people and start chatting, let the conversation drift its way towards restaurants and cooking, and then hear them say something like “Oh, Mary Black's mushrooms in Guinness batter with that dill and honey mayonnaise.” And they get all dreamy then, remembering the dish, and its unctuous flavours, its lush satisfaction, the fact that they order it everytime in Murphy Black's.
Then they snap out of it, but by that time you've already headed off up to Kilkee, to Murphy Black's, where Cillian (Murphy) tends front of house, and where Mary (Black) takes care of the kitchen. If you don't get away, they will start talking about Mary's legendary crab cakes, and you'll be there all day.
Murphy Black's restaurant is a simple, sole room, comfortable and welcoming, just right in it's informality, with the day's specials chalked on the board and a menu that has a page of starters and a page of main courses. Whilst you want to find good fish cookery here, a stone's throw from the beauty of Kilkee Bay, Ms Black also offers a sirloin steak from the excellent Kelly's butchers of Kilrush, and lamb shank braised in 8 Degrees red ale, and there is a vegetable lasagne.
But seafood is why you are here, and Ms Murphy's technique with fish and shellfish is straight-ahead, classic fish cookery: Loop Head seafood zarzuela; cod with creamed leeks and saffron cream; hake gratin with creamed potato; a classic shellfish bisque; seafood pie; prawn kebab with Thai green curry sauce.
Scampi is crisp and superbly made with monkfish; gratin of sole is stuffed with crab and baked; a lobster cocktail is bumper and fun and cordon bleu correct.Meantime, Cillian is chatting and opening the wines and recounting his latest Iron Man feat of endurance. The net result of this hospitality and this food is the feeling that you are almost eating in Mary and Cillian's own house.
Certainly Murphy Black's is professional and crisp, but there is no standard-issue restaurant formality and procedure here. There's just two people doing something they do uncommonly well together, looking after you, extolling the virtues of Loop Head, playing their part as food ambassadors for their region. Ms Black and Mr Murphy are Clare Champions, alright.
John McKenna
