Restaurant review: Fawn
Noble Rotty treats in Oranmore, Co Galway
Pairing stellar wines with simple food in a restaurant is what we call the Noble Rot formula.
London’s Noble Rot restaurants have pioneered the matching of the world’s most intriguing and iconoclastic wines with cooking that is straight-ahead and delicious. Great wines, simple food, as the old adage has it.
Jason and Ervin are doing something noble rotty in Fawn, a smart room in the centre of busy Oranmore, several miles south-east of Galway city. They have the great wines – a whole 18 pages of them – on what is an atypically capacious wine list for a modern restaurant.
They have a purpose-built Smokin’ Soul Santa Maria woodfired grill, from the Wexford maestros, just the thing for seizing the organoleptic potential of fish, meats and veggies.
Their sourcing offers the produce of the Best of the West – Friendly Farmer chicken; Happy Lobster seafood; Oranmore Organics – and it’s when they hit that sweet spot of flame-licked food, paired with an inspiring glass of vino, that Fawn hits its stride.
They hit that stride when we were served an excellent Pigs on the Green pork chop with locally grown organic swiss chard, and a large lemon sole grilled and served with lemon, caper, redcurrant and brown butter.
Tullamore’s Pigs on the Green has been an inspiring producer of superb free-range pork in the Midlands and West for many years, and everything Fergus and Sandra Dunne produce is benchmark. Here, the fire had brought out the best of the pork, which was sweet, juicy and torched with flame. Excellent sourcing, precise cooking, fine presentation.
Beef options from the grill are sourced from Gilligan’s Farm of Roscommon, an all-too-rare example of a farming and butchery business who rear and produce their own animals. Fawn offers striploin and fillet steak, along with a 16-oz T-bone designed for two people. Foods from the grill come with chimichurri and peppercorn sauce, and portions are super generous.
The lemon sole was as good as the pork, showing its perfect suitability for flame grilling, the fish skin nicely crisped, and the sharp pop of the redcurrants was a nicely acidic note. As there was also a large dish of potatoes served with the mains we scarcely needed the salad of local greens, pickled veg and grated cheddar.
Wines by the glass are served in 125ml size, and use of the Coravin means there is an entire page of beauties available, from Savignan from the Jura to Pheasant’s Tears from Georgia, to Arianna Occipinti’s Il Frapatto from Sicily and Filipa Pato’s Nossa Calcarlo from Portugal.
With the main courses we went with La Bruja de las Rojas, a biodynamic garnacha grown at an altitude of almost 1000 metres in the Gredos Mountains near Madrid, by Daniel Gómez and Fernando García.
The guy’s Comando G project strives to make wines that reflect terroir whilst using grapes such as garnacha, usually considered a workhorse variety. This was clean, lovely and lively, exactly the sort of visceral wine that flame-cooked food loves.
Arianna Occipinti and Filipa Pato are both represented on the selection of dessert wines, along with a Coteaux de Layon, which you can enjoy with Sarah’s Sweets, a quartet of pudding classics: burnt Basque cheesecake; chocolate pot; affogato; and our choice of lemon curd ice cream. This clever dish was a playful riff on lemon meringue pie, with the fluffy torched meringue served in a whirl on top of the excellent ice cream, served in a coup with a crinkle cookie.
The professional confidence of the main courses from the grill and the pudding was somehow missing from our starter dishes, of tempura oysters with fermented chilli and ginger sauce, and Doonbeg crab claws with roast garlic, oyster and lime cream. The oysters lacked any saline oomph whilst the crab claws were overwhelmed by the lime sauce.
This sort of glitch is to be expected in an ambitious enterprise which is still finding its voice after six months in business. Restaurants in satellite towns adjacent to the major cities tend to be conservative commercial chains, but Fawn in Oranmore is individual, radical and unexpected. The fact that they had a busy service on the Monday evening we visited shows that County Galway has the appetite for that noble rotty combo of solid cooking and superb wines.
Oranmore Directory:
Armorica@Cornerstone
The wonderful Armorica Restaurant has moved down the street to Little Armorica @ Cornerstone. Irish ingredient-led cooking with a French accent. Nicholas and Natasha have long been one of the great teams in West Coast food. Follow them here.
Brazco
When leaving Galway driving south, we always stop at Brazco, either their Oranmore stop, or for a more leisurely break the Carraig Lair S.C. Good news! They also sell their expertly made coffees in no less than five locations around Galway and Salthill. Barista brilliance, and lovely baking.
The Coach House Hotel and Basillico Restaurant
When Galway gets overheated, consider staying in the simple Coach House Hotel, a no fuss, well run stop off, just a train ride away from the city. Basilico has long been a cornerstone of great Italian cooking, under the guidance of chef Paolo Sabatini. And for those who really want to chill – the pizzas and pastas are available as room service in the hotel.
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The pork chop looks magnificent!