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My Reason for Eating Out

From time to time I do eat out on family bases more specially on Sundays where we consider as being a Gods day that everyone should rest after a long busy week of either work or study. So on Sunday I prefer to take my family out for a dinner and come home just to relax and not thinking of going in the kitchen to cook. The second reason of eating out is when we travel some times around the country to visit family and friends, I get myself food because of the distance which I travel some time. I do also eat out when I go shopping or in occasions if invited by a friend. From the above reason I can say that eating out is based on social reasons for my most of the times. But the eating out which Im going to talk in this report is the meal experience I had for study purpose.

Pre Meal Expectations

Going to this meal experience, I had in mind some expectations about what I was going to see and eat as the place where I was going was Connemara, a training restaurant owned by the College: GMIT. So my expectations were not that of a fine dining restaurant, but a training place were some mistakes can occure during the service as from the chefs in the kitchen to the waiters in the restaurant, all were going to be trainees. I expected to see tables and chairs being of nice quality to give comfort well enjoying my meal. The waitress was supposed to be clean, with nice uniform, to give us a nice welcome, to be polite, and to ask for our coats. As for value for money, I expected to have a nice meal, not too much or too small portion on the plates, but medium one. I wanted to see a nice presentation of food on plate and well garnished classically.

The Location Connemara restaurant is situated up stairs on the first floor of the Hotel School; with a bistro bar close to it were all students from culinary and the hotel management train day to day during their study in GMIT. We will divide this meal experience in two categories, the first one being one for tangible product and the second category for intangible product. 1 Tangible Product a) Food

b) Facilitating Goods

2. Intangible Product When we arrived at the doors of Connemara training restaurant we were politely greeted by a waiter who was standing by and showed us where to put our bags and coat. Although the waiter was a bit nerves, I can say that it was a warm welcoming getting in mind that the waiters were not professional, but trainees. They were all friendly and were trying to please and showed us the table and place where we took place to a table of six. The Internal Presentation
The cleanness, the presentation and painting were above my expectations, with a magnolia painted wall, the Flowers , tables cloths and chairs march together, the internal of the restaurant was warm, the light were adjusted to bring in a nice atmosphere and the soft music was playing.

Evaluation, visual perception, Description of dish, Flavour, Portion size and Odour. 1st Course
Name of dish: Thornhill Duck Plate

This was a piece of smoked and seared duck breast, duck confit spring roll and foie gras Terrine. Looking at this starter, the presentation was good looking on the plate, it was appealing and the smell was good, the taste was sweet and little sour with creamy finished flavour. It was a nice hot dish as it looks on the above picture and the creamy sauce served with the dish was just one of rare combination to finish the dish with as it makes it delicious.

2nd Course
Dish name: Puree of creamy sweet potato

This soup was first of all a puree of the sweet potatoes; finish with little cream to give it a creamy texture by the end. But what I can say about it is that the soup was cold and little bit burn, it had a sweet creamy taste. If this soup was hot enough and not burned, it was going to be a nice one.

3rd Course
Dish name: Oisin Venison

This is young red deer. I used to think that venison lacked flavour, but this meat had a depth of flavour and tenderness that was quite tasty. It was well presented with smoked Venison spring roll wich was salty in taste, plus a saddle of venison which was midium rare, it had that rich and deeply intense gamey flavour and was finished in my opinion with a red wine jus. Beside the meat was glazed salsify and Savoy cabbage which had different texture and appearance from white, spring or green cabbage.

4th Course
Dish name: Selection of MacNean Restaurant Desserts

The Dessert was sweet, creamy and little sour. It was made of small portion of crme brulee, raspberry shortcake, panna cotta and strawberry sorbet.

5th Course
Celeriac soup with a puff pastry

This was just a simple puree of celeriac which was served for Hors doeuvre accompany by small pieces of pizza, puff pastry, and a sun dried tomato bread. The bread and pizza were crunchy and the soup was creamy.

Were my expectations satisfied?

8 Well, going to this meal experience I had in mind a lot of pre- meal expectations in my head, because I thought that I was going to a celebrity chef restaurant, and when I got there I can say that all my expectation were satisfied, because we received a warm welcome with the waitress asking to take off our coats, the food was a high quality, the service was outstanding their was no rushing people to leave the place, the communication was really good between us and the waitress from my point of view I will say that the service and the meal experience was above my expectations.

Recommendations
All I can recommend after this meal experience is just for the owner to look a little bit at the waitress service as some of them were not looking like qualified for the fine dining services. The reason I say this is just seeing that the waiter who came to the table where I was sitting spilled the wine which he was caring on the tray and all my socks were wet for the rest of my meal.

Some other Observations

Neven Maguire himself come to read and explain the menu to us which was really nice and surprisingly we got a new cooking book signed by him, looking to all that for me was just fantastic, it made me forget the long journey from galway to Cavan for the meal. Thanks to Maguire for that because it made my evening, that was the positive incidence, but the negative one was that the pine nut which were not mention on the menu were added in almost every plate making it a really danger for people allergic to nuts. The wine spilled by the waiter just showed me how unprofessional he was.

Overall Experience
If talking about value for money, I can definitely return to Maguire restaurant. The reasons why I should return to a such restaurant are really simple, first the service was classic, secondly the place was very clean, thirdly the atmosphere was incredible and last of all the food was cooked to the highest standard.

The Menu
The menu was a table dhotes or a set menu with a fixed price. It had some terminology and languages which retained my attention like: Chicken lollipop, Kataifi Prawn and Braised feather blade which were a bit unusual.

The external Appearance

The external of the house restaurant was good looking and the location was just at the main road of blacklion village.

The Internal Presentation

9 The cleanness, the presentation and painting were above my expectations, with a magnolia painted wall, the candles , tables cloths and chairs march together, the internal of the house restaurant was warm, the light were adjusted to bring in a nice atmosphere and the soft music was playing.

Service;
The staff received us at doors, asking us to take our coats, the all had nice black and Blue uniforms, once inside they showed us the place, the water was poured in our glasses, followed by the hors doeuvre (bread rolls and butter). The first impression was the staff in middle of training for this type of restaurant, they gave us the menus, told us the service offered, that was just what I expected to see from a training restaurant. The communication between us and the staff was permanent and all the time they were coming to ask if everything was okay.