`Dan is a great homemaker," said the friend whom we met for dinner at Dan Mullane's Mustard Seed restaurant. In truth, her remark was almost cautious. For the fact is that Dan is a genius of a homemaker, a man who weaves a web of wondrous hospitality from the moment you walk through the grand doors of this handsome house, a few miles from Adare in Co Limerick.
Everything about Echo Lodge conspires to leave you helpless with pleasure: the brilliant staff, who are among the finest you will find anywhere; the grace of the design, perfectly pitched between understatement and adornment; and, finally, David Norris's cooking, which is the perfect soulmate to Dan Mullane's magisterial hospitality.
As restaurant menus push ever further in the direction of funky, fusion food, like the true originals they are, Mullane and Norris have wisely turned their backs on all that. The Mustard Seed offers modern comfort food, as they explain in the notes on the menu: "Surely it is in winter that food comes into our lives with an ever sharper focus - because it's then that we all need to be warm, cosy and comforted."
That comfort comes in the form of starters such as rich chicken liver parfait, served with a blackcurrant and orange syrup, or a feuillete of mushrooms with a little potato confit and a "dropeen" of truffle oil.
This is food deliberately designed to present nothing but pleasure, with all its various flavours sinuous and accounted for, and its concentration firmly on appropriate textures - the smoothness of the parfait, the contrast between the pastry layers of the feuillete and the rich mushrooms. And I think it says something about the cooking in The Mustard Seed that when they do play about with convention, such as serving lamb's kidneys with wholegrain mustard in an open pasta ravioli, then it doesn't work as well as the more conventional dishes. The textures here simply didn't work together, though each detail of the dish was good.
The main courses show the true comforting nature of Norris's work: sirloin of beef with polenta; roast guinea fowl with a rosemary nage; potato and goat's cheese cannelloni; roast duck breast with red onion marmalade; baked fillet of salmon with colcannon; monkfish with a potato rosti.
This is real one-two cooking, with the smart snap of flavour of a principal ingredient married effectively to a consoling staple, and it worked delightfully. My guinea fowl was delightfully flavourful and toothsome, and it is interesting to see Norris use this underestimated bird where most menus offer bland chicken. Served with a confit of its leg, it offered a cracking contrast of textures, and the rosemary nage was spot on.
The monkfish did trumpet a modern note, as it was served with a tomato and spring onion salsa, but the key details here were fine fish and some crisp sea kale, and once again the comforting fried notes of the potato rosti.
The salmon with colcannon had a chive and butter sauce, and it was the sort of food that you want to eat with a fork, holding the plate in your lap, while curled up in front of a blazing fire.
If you can't get a blazing fire and a chance to kick off your shoes - though there is a cosy library in Echo Lodge where you could just about do that - then the next best place to eat this food is in the diningroom of the Mustard Seed itself. On a wintry Friday evening, the place was hopping with excited, content folk, which prompts the simple question: where do they all come from?
It is a tribute to Mullane's skills and the welcoming aptitude of his team that people come from far and wide to eat here and stay here. The desserts would certainly snag the sweet-toothed: lovely warm butterscotch sauce is drizzled over and around homemade ice creams; sticky toffee pudding shows again how this once-abused dessert can reach noble heights;and the modern improvisation of adding passionfruit and strawberry to a creme brulee works perfectly.
Maybe the sort of reason why people come here is best summed up by the way in which our fiveyear-old and three-year-old were treated. My wife asked if they could have sausages and mash in their room. The plates were brought on a silver tray, hidden under silver cloches. The potato had been piped through a nozzle - "Roly poly potatoes!", they shrieked - and was topped with parsley, with sausages arranged around, and a little ramekin of ketchup on the side. And, once the parsley was removed for them, they ate with gusto. Cloches for kids, and comfort for adults: Dan Mullane knows everything we want.
The Mustard Seed at Echo Lodge, Ballingarry, Co Limerick tel: 069-68508, fax: 069-68511. Dinner 7 p.m.9.45 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. Four-course dinner £30. Major cards.