The Sea Rooms, Kelly's Hotel
From Ember to Plate
Restaurants are organic creations.
They adapt, they develop, they mature, they refine, and they survive as long as they can adapt, develop, mature and refine.
In time, so long as it is well-minded and well-tended, the restaurant will acquire its own complexion and personality: it will enter the stage of exhibiting the restaurantness of a restaurant, that aura that we all crave.
It has been fascinating, over the last three years, to have watched the organic development of The Sea Rooms, at Kelly’s Hotel in Rosslare. The Sea Rooms faced a challenge from day one: how could it assimilate with the two other dining spaces in Kelly’s: Beaches, the grand, 19th century hotel dining room, and La Marine, their 20th century bustling bistro, now almost 30-years-old.
The Sea Rooms, then, had to make a 21st century statement about where we are with food and wine in modern Ireland. The building, by Dublin-based architects LUCA, was an unequivocal statement of post-modern modernism: a glass box with black burnt shou sugi ban cladding and a live-fire grill installation by Wexford maestros Smokin’ Soul.
Because nothing says 21st Century Irish Dining more than Japanese design and live-fire food.
Chef Chris Fullam took the concept and hit the ground running with some inspired ideas: smoked egg yolk with Cais na Tire cheep’s cheese ravioli; ember-baked celeriac with aubergine, red pepper and walnut; barbecued pear with creme fraiche. The use of live-fire gave the food an especially rich complexity, and Fullam showed really deft control of how to use smoked food.
Fullam was assisted in the kitchen by a young local guy named David Harte, who would go on to win the prestigious Eurotoques Young Chef of the Year Award in 2025, having made the shortlist the previous year. Between the pair of them, Sea Rooms food was good-to-go.
The questions of how to develop organically weren’t entirely solved, however. The restaurant was in the grounds of the hotel, but had no separate entrance, unlike the hugely popular La Marine. Irish people tend to be self-conscious about walking through a hotel if they are not staying there.
And when you are trying to attract both locals, local holiday makers and hotel guests, what style of menu will work for both? So the team tried conventional a la carte lunch menus, and a 7-course tasting menu at dinnertime, alongside a 3-course a la carte dinner menu.
In August 2025 a new entrance to the restaurant was created, announced by a funky, lollipop-red sculpture. The menu try-outs continued, and in mid 2025 they were offering: the 7-course dinner menu; a 3-course dinner menu; a vegan 7-course tasting menu; a vegetarian 7-course tasting menu, and a 7-course tasting menu with a wine pairing.
That sounds like The Paradox of Choice, that grey area where more choice only makes people more confused. Meantime, there were staff expeditions to London to check out the hip hotshots such as Tomos Parry’s Mountain, trips to harvest ideas about form and presentation.
When the 2026 season swung into view, Kelly’s announced that David Harte would succeed his mentor, Chris Fullam, as head chef. The change also introduced a new title: The Sea Rooms – Smokehouse, and announced the food style as “From Ember to Plate.”
The new menu was divided into six sections, ranging from Small Bites to Dessert, with four small plates, four medium plates, four side plates, and three sharing plates for two people. Even the Chef’s Dinner Menu offered a small selection of choices, rather than set courses. This was less the Paradox of Choice and more the Pleasure of Choice, with the broader palette of the menu foreshortened to a selection of the kitchen’s favourite dishes, set at a fixed price according to which main course you choose. A wine pairing, at €32, is the best deal in Rosslare.
When you get a taste of David Harte’s cooking, the first thing that comes to mind is: no way is this guy 24 years old. But he is, and clearly Mr Harte has an old head on young shoulders, because his cooking already has verve, control and intelligence. You don’t get to win the Eurotoque Award without having the chops, and he has the chops.
Having the chops means that the simplest things on the menu can often have the biggest impact, and we are here to tell you that the smoked honey glazed carrots with buttermilk sauce, almonds and thyme are some kind of wonderful, humble root vegetables destined to achieve vegetable immortality. Carrots, for chrissake!
But Harte does the same thing with his barbecued whole prawns with smoked butter beurre blanc – you can have the discussion/argument/shouting match with your spouse over whether this tops Borgo’s masterpiece – and he does the same things with his baked leeks with Cais na Tire mornay and walnuts.
Before you hit the main course on the dinner menu, then, Harte has asked you to reconsider potato bread, revise your opinion of carrots, think anew about leeks, and wonder why you don’t eat mussel toast every day of your life.
We ordered the bbq black sole, and aside from its deliciousness it’s a great order because the waiter will fillet the dish at table, an almost-vanished dining room skill. The red pepper sauce is lush, the baby potatoes with smoked mayo are just right.
The lovely pudding we fished with shows that the kitchen team are determined to use the embers right to the last bite, because the bbq lemon meringue with lemon sorbet is finished by toasting it with a roasting ember from the grill. Neat!
As the team continue to adapt and refine, they also like to shift the art works around the room, so even the furnishings are in a state of improvisation and flux. That creativity suits David Harte’s cooking to a T: this young guy and his crew are in the moment, right now.
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