A restaurant review!
Since we moved south, eight years ago, there has been a ðearth of restaurants where you can bring visitors to show off the best in food of this region. The Old Convent in Clogheen is an obvious exception but while that is truly spectacular it has it's own difficulties in terms of isolation.
Based on last night's dinner, there is a new kid on the block and The Stonehouse has set high standards for itself and hopefully this will continue. Clonmel needs a Fine Dining Restaurant. This was a great place when it was Clifford's and is a welcome return. Clonmel has more than enough Chinese restaurants who churn out almost 100 dishes on a menu. The StoneHouse is very much the opposite to this.
It has quite a limited menu. This is not a bad thing. It helps with both seasonality and te sense of walking before running in terms of getting the basics right. The food was exquisite with a high emphasis on presentation and taste. Our starters were the terrine where the duck was really allowed to come through. It was strong in flavour. The pain roti that it was served with was just a little bit too delicate for the terrine. Luckily we had been offered homemade bread on sitting and the sweet brioche worked well, by accident with the starter. My wife had the smoked salmon which looked beautiful and tasted just as good.
We both had lamb. It was lovely and pink. The parsley crust pulled every bit of the parsley flavour through. The ratatouille with feta was worthy of a course in itself. The little gnocchi were flawless
The pastry chef is certainly on their game. My wife adored the chocolate fondant. The honeycomb nougat was quite exquisite. Good coffee finished things off nicely.
Well done! We look forward to coming back.
