TOM DOORLEY/Eating Out: 'The decor may be deliberately over the top, but the food is pleasingly restrained'
If you are going to open a hotel at a roundabout on the outskirts of Galway, there are various ways of making it cool and fashionable. Employing Philip Treacy, the multimillionaire's milliner, as your interior designer is an expensive approach, but it is guaranteed to get you coverage in the kind of magazine that people buy more for the ads than they do for the editorial.
As a result, the G hotel is the sort of place where readers of Wallpaper* will feel as if they have walked into a colour feature. The whole place is an exercise in high camp, and it struck me as being fun in an exuberantly self-conscious kind of way. After a few days it might start to get on my nerves.
Having failed to dress specially for my lunchtime visit (in well-worn brown gardening corduroys, an unattractive but deeply comfortable green fleece and a pair of ankle-length boots with a thin patina of dried mud), I was surprised to find that the diningroom, with its vast purple sofas, was occupied almost entirely by the elderly and well-heeled of the county. We are talking chunky gold jewellery and S-type Jaguars. And that's just the men.
I bumped into a friend who agreed to join me for lunch as a Dutch treat. We reduced the average age by a few decades; there are not many places of which I can say that.
The general style of the grub is Italian, but it's not in the Irish trattoria genre, which involves slathering anything that doesn't move in tomato sauce and garlic. The decor may be deliberately over the top, but the food is pleasingly restrained.
Not many restaurants would serve - and I quote - "tomato, mozzarella and avocado", at least not on a menu that costs €34 for two courses or €40 for three. But it was good. The tomatoes had been very lightly roasted, to enhance the sweetness, the mozzarella came in those little balls the size of marbles and the fanned avocado was impeccably ripe and unblemished.
Drizzled with really good, nutty olive oil, this made a very simple and very satisfactory starter.
The friend had prawn cocktail, something that is cropping up all over the place, not always in a way that raises the spirits. Here it involved lots of very large and unusually well-flavoured tiger prawns, liberally anointed with a good Marie Rose sauce on a bed of crisp, shredded iceberg lettuce, all served in a big cocktail glass. Also present was yet another fanned avocado, which, to be honest, added little except scale.
Her goat's cheese tortelloni with cherry tomato and basil salsa was impeccably simple: good al dente pasta giving on to a filling of sharp, salty, creamy cheese, all backed up with the sweet tartness of fresh tomato.
Simplicity was the hallmark of my turbot, too: two fillets grilled until just done and served with a wedge of lemon and a little ramekin of what seemed to be parsley oil but which the menu listed as "salsa verde". As salsa verde it was atrocious; as chunky parsley oil it was rather good.
With a very light and delicate Viognier from the south of France, a bottle of mineral water and an espresso, my half of the lunch came to €72.50. Had we not gone Dutch it would have come to €106.50.
What I liked about the food at the G was that it managed to be modern without being affected: stripped down, basic, elegant and ultra-simple. It's also pretty expensive, of course, but you have to bear in mind that you are paying for the environment as well as what is on your plate. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it may not be for everyone.
A new head chef will have arrived by the time you read these comments, so there may be changes ahead. I just hope he keeps on keeping it simple. Cheffy food combined with the interior design could lead to sensory overload.
tdoorley@irish-times.ie
The G, Wellpark, Galway, 091-865200, www.theghotel.ie
Wine Choice
Our Château du Pesquié Viognier (€32.50) was lovely if a little dear.
There are two Pinot Grigios (one at €28, the other at €37.50), which underlines how this grape is the new Chardonnay. Highlights include the huge Domaine du Vieux Lazaret Châteauneuf 2003, at €49.20, Domaine Tempier Bandol, at €58.80, and the glorious Domaine de Trévallon 1999, at €118.50.
Among the whites I Sistri, from Felsina, (€45) knocks spots off many white Burgundies and is perhaps the bargain; among the reds Castello di Farnetella is a juicy Chianti from the Colli Senesi and, at €28, is fairly priced. Sassicaia 2002 at €210 strikes me as being a bit cheeky. A straight Puligny-Montrachet, even from Pillot, is pretty steep at €120.