You take a bite of the lemon tart, in The Buck’s Head Inn, and your uncontrollable reaction is an expletive that The New York Times would feel it would be unable to print.
You can’t help it. The lemon tart’s level of perfect deliciousness demands a reaction. A primal reaction.
Of course, your lunch guest bursts into laughter. Because who reacts to a spoonful of lemon tart by uttering “Fuck me!”.
But eliciting that sort of reaction is what Alex Greene is getting up to in The Buck’s Head. And it’s not just the lemon tart. The mashed turnip will have you swooning. The john dory is so perfect that you want to mount it on a pedestal. The chicken liver parfait is so technically meticulous you want to give it an A+.
The unsurprising thing is that this standard of cooking from Alex Greene is no surprise. Robust in flavour, yet finessed in texture, his cooking has always been a study in excellence.
He worked with Michael Deane and chef Derek Creagh, followed by stints in London at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, in New Zealand and at The Cliff House in Ardmore, before returning to Deane’s Eipic where he held a Michelin star. It’s significant, however, that he started his cooking career in The Buck’s Head kitchen, washing pots alongside chef Alison Crothers.
And, in the storied Buck’s Head, a charming restaurant with rooms in the pretty village of Dundrum amidst south County Down’s drumlin lands, he has found just the right place to make his mark. Dundrum has always had the potential to be the Kinsale or Dingle of County Down. It just needed a starry chef to drive standards skywards. With Alex Greene, Dundrum has got the right man.
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Funny thing is, Greene is only one part of the deal. His partner in business is Bronagh McCormick, one of the best front-of-house operators in the North. Ms McCormick has been managing Michael Deane’s stable of restaurants for the last several years, after time spent working in French vineyards and in the U.K. Together, they first opened a little food retail business in Newcastle called Fish & Farm. The word about their partnership in Dundrum has gotten out already: the only lunch booking we could secure was for 2pm on a Thursday.
So, what did we eat? Excellent breads to begin, including an especially fine treacle and stout wheaten bread. Then that tip-top parfait with a burnt butter brioche, and a dish of beets cooked over coals with tomato, lovage, goat’s curd and little linseed crackers, the vegetarian choice that had its quiet thunder eclipsed by the parfait.
Main courses were as handsome to look at as they were delicious to eat. The john dory was two fillets of the most perfect fish with a lemon and yeast beurre blanc, with confit potato and wild leek, a demonstration plate if ever there was one. The pan roast chicken passed the all important chicken skin test with flying colours: the skin was crisp as vellum and ate like the best communion wafer ever created. You don’t need any starches with this sort of cooking, so of course we had the truffle and Parmesan fries, and they were crisp and crunchy to the tooth. The mashed turnip was as good as turnip gets.
And then the puddings. Of the four on offer, we chose the classic lemon tart, served with mint leaves and raspberries, and the creme caramel with pineapple, brown butter financier and vanilla. Greene and his team know that you don’t need to reinvent the dessert classics: you just have to show them the right sort of respect. Both puds were perfect, and we will be heading south to try the chocolate ganache with yuzu, coffee and honeycomb, and the sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and brown bread ice cream.
The Buck’s Head Inn, Dundrum, Northern Ireland
I think I would have died and gone to heaven if I was served any of those dishes. My favourite is Gordon Ramsay’s Citron Tart, but this one looks equally as good, nothing like a great lemon dessert with fabulous pastry