Restaurant review: Harrow in Killarney has a solid food offering and knows its customers well
Good Well Solid, Food Is Rock Cooked The Produce, Harrow In
Killarney is the Klondike of Irish tourism, the source of the original motherlode first prospected over 250 years ago and still being mined to this day to great effect: with 1.1m visitors passing through each year, tourism is worth around €400m annually to the town.
Yet, bizarrely, despite a seemingly infinite capacity for hosting visitors, the quality of food served up to the table has been often far less inspiring, even as the culinary offering elsewhere in the country accelerated ever upwards, even into the Michelin stratosphere.
In fact, when enquiring after the best dining to be had in Killarney, it was not unknown to be pointed in the direction of the far smaller town of Kenmare and its infinitely superior restaurants.
But there was precious little incentive to effect change when there was so much to be made from processing endless coach-loads of Americans on package tours who only dined in whichever hotel they laid their heads for the night, invariably eating the class of dispiriting fare that results when price margins trump flavour and taste.
Certainly, the drop off in American tourism to Europe after 9/11 was an early warning sign that the model was not forever invulnerable but it was the impact of the pandemic keeping the entire world at home, that seemed to finally jolt the town into an epicurean evaluation and a realisation it needed to put far more effort into attracting visitors from closer to home, not least Irish ones with increasingly demanding palates. New local additions such as the funky little Luna cafe-deli-wine bar and the immensely stylish Pig’s Lane basement cocktail and whiskey bar are far from the class of establishment you’d have expected to find in Killarney even a mere five or six years ago.
Some years ago, I swooned over John O’Leary’s cooking as head chef at Yew Tree Restaurant, in the Muckross Park Hotel & Spa, one staging post in a career largely spent working in hotels but just over two years ago, he finally took the plunge and opened his own place, Harrow. The interior is smart, with bold clean lines, and we take a seat to the rear where French doors are open to a rare summer evening sun.
Captain Foley and I have taken it upon ourselves to find Killarney’s best negroni over the weekend and the Harrow version goes down very nicely as we find our bearings.
Of our two starters, salt baked beetroot salad takes the honours, creamy lactic goat’s curd enhancing excellent and earthy beetroot while Swiss chard, bitter radicchio, carmelised pecan, and aged balsamic dressing further flesh out the spectrum — a great summer starter.
Panzanella is how thrifty Italians use up stale bread, usually served with tomatoes, cucumber, onion, and olives, the dried bread cubes rehydrated by the olive and vinegar dressing so prawns panfried in shallot butter, with a herb panzanella salad and Marie Rose dressing sounds appealing.
However, ‘salad’ pretty much comprises the bread overly dressed in a heavy emulsion and the claggy texture detracts from decent prawns, too-sweet Marie Rose unable to save the day. I remove the bread entirely, eating only the prawns.
The hospitality practitioners of Killarney obviously know their clientele because I’ve seen similar iterations of a confit pork belly dish on other menus around town but the precise Harrow version seems to have the edge. Tender, flavoursome rolled belly is served with even more succulent braised pork cheek speckled with toasted oats, black pudding bon bon, and silken sweet carrot purée.
Cornfed chicken presents as a glazed breast, commendably still on the bone, and it is succulent and flavoursome, thanks in no small part to a saffron stuffing. Carrot purée reappears to further applause, and potato terrine is a very more-ish comforter. Truth be told, it was advertised Beluga lentils that swayed my choice, but they are employed as a scant garnish rather than a substantial portion of the dish. Obviously, no crime, but a heartbreaker for this particular soldier who ranks Puy or Beluga lentils up there as food for the gods, to be dispensed with liberal abandon.
Our wine is a charming workhorse, Leyre-Loup Fleurie 2020, crisp juicy fruit and pleasant finish, more than able for our choices.
Crème brûlée has a good vanilla custard but is almost entirely devoid of usual caramelised shell of torched sugar, here merely implied, and ‘roast’ pineapple and banana are near raw, a long way shy of time and temperature needed to even begin caramelising the fruit’s sugars. A deconstructed amaretto cheesecake is better, unctuous, rich and creamy, with chocolate soil and baked honeycomb for texture as apple compote injects a sweet acidity.
Overall, the food in Harrow is rock solid, good produce, well cooked, though the menu is a bit wintery for the season, even if it has been an ‘extra blanket’ summer so far, but I suspect that is yet another example of knowing your audience and their appetites for the place is absolutely packed with a mixed crowd of all ages.
I’d happily return but I’d be back even faster if John O’Leary were to add more of the thoughtful culinary innovation of which he is eminently capable and which I thoroughly enjoyed in the Yew Tree; I doubt he’d lose a single Harrow customer were he to do so.