Seaview House Hotel
Seaview House Hotel reconciles the irreconcilable.
The uniqueness of this West Cork hotel lies in its ability to offer guests all the delights and luxuries of a top-class hotel, whilst also managing to encapsulate the calm, the charm and the private ambience of an Irish country house.
Seaview manages to be both modern, yet traditional. The house feels grandly Victorian, yet there is a cutting-edge bath and spa house out in the grounds where you can luxuriate in a seaweed wrap to your heart’s content.
The food is truly classical – consommé julienne; scallops with black pudding; crab salad with Marie Rose sauce; sole on the bone with lemon butter – yet the plating and presentation are confidently contemporary. In the bright light of the dining room, the cooking and the setting chime perfectly: great West Cork food in a great West Cork dining room.
There is no mystery as to how Seaview House achieves this saintly dualism: the team under Seaview owner Ronan O’Sullivan are as good as good gets – patient; funny; whip-smart; super-professional; and all the while they are also pure West Cork.
Mr O’Sullivan is one of those people with hospitality in his blood, and he sets the tone of Seaview at a genial, blissed-out vibe that means you need only step through the doors to feel your shoulders loosening, and your holiday modus operandi switching on. Seaview House Hotel is a classic.