What we're cooking this week

Slow-braised for four hours, then finished directly on the embers until the edges go crisp. Romesco made with Wicklow hazelnuts, burnt lemon, a lot of good oil.

Cloughjordan beetroot buried in the ash overnight, dressed like a tartare with capers, shallot and a horseradish cream that will wake you up.

Carlingford rocks, opened to order. Two raw with a cider mignonette, two laid straight on the coals for ninety seconds with beech-smoked butter. Six for €23 if you are serious.

Ballybrado flour, milled in Cahir, baked at six in the morning in the falling heat of the fire. Cultured butter smoked over beech and whipped with sea salt. Refills are free; ask.

Kilkenny trout cured a full day in salt and juniper, then hung twenty minutes over cooling oak — enough to perfume it, not enough to cook it. Buttermilk, cucumber, dill oil.

Mayo sheep's milk curd under leeks charred whole in the ash and peeled back to the sweet middle. Toasted seeds, a spoon of green oil, black pepper.

Kish Fish mussels opened on the grill bars, each one spooned with a hot, red, faintly reckless butter. Bread comes with it because you will want it.

Shoulder from Ballyknocken in Co. Wicklow, cooked eight hours beside the fire until it gives way to a spoon. Wild garlic when it's in, salsa verde when it's not.

Whatever the Kish Fish day boats land on Thursday — turbot most weeks, brill when it isn't — cooked whole in the fish clamp and finished with a hot vinaigrette of its own juices. Priced per person, minimum two, about twenty-five minutes.

Forty days on the bone from a single Meath herd, grilled hard and rested on the warm stone beside the hearth. Bone-marrow butter, watercress, a wedge of charred lemon. Served pink unless told otherwise.

Crown hung a week, skin rendered slowly over low embers, sauce made from the bones and last summer's blackcurrants. Sharp enough to keep the fat honest.

A thick cut of Kish Fish hake grilled skin-down over white ash, with mussels, sea beet and a broth built on the trimmings. Clean, hot and gone in ten minutes.

Ballybrado flour rolled by hand every afternoon — badly at first, then well. Tomatoes roasted in the mouth of the fire until they collapse, basil, ricotta smoked in-house.

A whole celeriac from Cloughjordan, salt-crusted and buried in embers for three hours, then carved at the pass like a small joint. Hazelnut picada, charred apple, its own roasting juices.

Brown butter pastry, honey from the hives on the Cabra allotments, caramelised until it is very nearly too far. Crème fraîche to cut it. It has not left the menu since 2019 and there would be letters if it did.

Cream infused with cooled oak embers before it ever meets the chocolate. Dense, savoury, faintly of bonfire — the one dessert that argues with the wine.

Tomás's grandmother's recipe — almond, lemon zest, the cross of Saint James dusted on top. He will tell you it is better in Galicia. He is probably right.

Pears roasted in the dying heat overnight so they go amber the whole way through, buttermilk ice cream, a shard of honeycomb.

Sheep's milk ice cream churned each morning, toasted brown-flour crumb, a spoon of last summer's blackcurrants. The quiet one.

Chalky, saline, faintly of the sea. The glass Aoife pours when someone announces they don't like white wine.

Biodynamic, white pepper and green apple. Cuts through anything that has spent time in smoke.

Six days on skins. Apricot skin, bitter orange and a grippy finish that stands up to anything off the coals.

Amphora-aged, waxy and wild. Our most-argued-about glass, which is exactly why we keep it open.

Served cool from the cellar. Crushed raspberry and wet stone — the red we drink with fish and refuse to apologise for.

Dry, high-altitude rosado from old bush vines. Starts the evening better than almost anything else on the list.

Irish single pot still, demerara, and a glass smoked with a splint from the same log store that feeds the hearth. Stirred, never hurried.

Oranges halved and blackened on the grill, then steeped in the campari for a fortnight. Bitter, smoky, dangerous at 5.30pm.

Gin, lime cordial made in-house on Mondays, a rosemary sprig lit and put out under the glass.

Manzanilla, sloe gin from hedgerows near Ballyknocken, soda and a long strip of lemon. Salty and low-proof.

Our own amaro — gentian, birch, spent coffee — lengthened with a dry pét-nat. The drink to have while you wait for the table.

Bitter, orange-peel and gentian, built like the negroni and just as slow to drink.

Made each morning with allotment honey and far more lemon than is sensible.

Elderflower in early summer, blackberry and apple by October. Whatever Ruth picked on her day off.

Assam, jasmine green, or a lemon verbena tisane from the courtyard pots. In a pot, not a bag.

A single Irish-roasted lot, changed every few weeks. We will happily make it decaf and we will not raise an eyebrow.

Brewed by the jug after eight o'clock and poured freely until we put the chairs up.