Great chefs are not born, they are made. If they are lucky, the people who make them great chefs will instil and inspire in them the vital qualities of dedication and patience, of exactitude and precision.
Danny Millar shares the northern spelling of his surname with Robbie Millar, the luminary chef of Shanks in Bangor, Co Down, who has been the leading light of Northern gastronomy for the past couple of years. As Robbie Millar was imbued with the passion and precision of Paul Rankin, of Roscoff, so after a couple of years with Robbie Millar, Danny Millar's work shows terrific flair and concentration.
Above all, what Danny Millar has learnt is control: there is not a gratuitous or lackadaisical note to be found anywhere in his work.
Danny Millar now has the delightful room of The Narrows, in Portaferry, south Co Down, to work in. The Narrows is a housecum-hostel, run by the Brown brothers, Will and Rob, for the past few years. The food had not amounted to much until the arrival, from Shanks, of Danny Millar and his lieutenant, Paul Arthurs. The room was made over, and within a few weeks, the word was out. The word about Millar and Arthurs is going to become deafening in times to come, for here is a team whose work has everything.
We began dinner with a dish which the manageress announced as being just in the door: fresh Portavogie langoustines, made into a modern prawn cocktail salad. This meant, in practice, a composed salad of prawns, oven-dried tomatoes, soft-boiled eggs, and crisp salad leaves. In other words, this was a high-wire dish, where everything could go wrong if sufficient care was not taken: the tomatoes could be too dry, the egg rubbery, the prawns watery, the leaves dull.
The reality was an astonishing dish, with every detail as perfect as one could ever hope it would be. The prawns were vigorous with flavour, the eggs were soft and still-wobbly, the oven-dried tomatoes were sweet, the leaves and dressing were voluptuous.
I ordered seared foie gras with shiitake mushrooms and a honey and ginger jus, partly because I had a recent frame of reference: the foie gras cooked by Philip Howard in The Square, in London, described on these pages recently. Now, comparisons are odious, but sometimes they are unavoidable. Howard's foie gras was superb, but Millar's was out of this world.
Two small pieces of liver sat on a little tower of spinach, with shards of shiitake dotted around and about the dish. Once again, what the chef had achieved was the co-ordination of every detail: the jus just slightly sweet to offset the liver, the shiitake dark and fleshy in flavour, and contrasted with the spinach. This was the best foie gras I have eaten, anywhere. Millar's exactitude meant that everything continued on this exalted plain. Roast hake with butter beans, chorizo and a basil hot pot was a deep dish with perfectly roasted fish, which was as fresh as one could hope for, and what was nice here was the hidden slices of chorizo set under the beans, and the vivid accent of the basil. Once again, the dish had been precisely composed, with each flavour detail used wisely and maturely.
Rib-eye steak with spicy fries and a Roquefort butter made the only mistake of the evening. The butter was atop the perfectly grilled steak, but both these were over the fries. This was silly: fries need to be crisp, and you cannot place anything on top of them. It was also silly because everything here was splendid, and placing the steak on top mixed up the flavours more than one would have liked. But, architectural efforts aside, this was smart food, with the Roquefort butter an inspired touch. A little dish of vegetables featured sweet roasted parsnips, richly flavoured red cabbage, spinach and chargrilled baby fennel, all excellent.
Great chefs make everything seem new, so let us remember that what my wife had ordered for dinner was, in effect, prawn cocktail and steak and chips, the quintessential Saturday Night Special.
Sadly, there was no Black Forest Gateau on the menu to allow her to complete a meal from the 1970s (I do think Millar and Arthurs should add the great gateau, at least for the joke). So, we ordered passionfruit tart, and mango compote with a pineapple sorbet.
Regular readers of this page may wonder why certain dishes are frequently ordered in the course of restaurant reviews, most especially desserts such as creme brulee, chocolate mousse and lemon tart. The answer, quite simply, is that if these benchmark dishes are right, then you know you have a kitchen which pays attention to the necessary details.
By this reckoning, there is hardly anyone in the country paying more attention to the details than Millar and Arthurs. My passionfruit tart - an elaborate lemon tart, in effect - was dizzyingly delicious. the texture firm yet yielding, the pastry thin and crisp. The mango compote incorporated barely-cooked pieces of mango in a sherbetty pineapple sorbet, and it was delightful.
Service was superb, as relaxed and controlled as only northerners can make it. We drank some Casablanca Sauvignon Blanc and a fine Raimat Abadia, and we had a demonstration of a great pair of chefs at work, two guys right at the cutting edge of contemporary Irish cooking. Food this good is inspiring, nothing less, and while we have to be grateful to cooks such as Robbie Millar and Paul Rankin for the practical lessons they have taught chefs like Danny Millar and Paul Arthurs, what we really have to be grateful for is the culture of culinary excellence which they have created.
The Narrows, 8 Shore Road, Portaferry, Co Down, tel: 08 012477 28148. Major cards. The Narrows is offering a discount on accommodation for those having dinner: details from Will Brown at the above number.