Overwood,
Balloo House,
1 Comber Road,
Killinchy,
Co Down,
BT23 6PA
028 9754 1210
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IN times of turmoil, you try to find clarity - and maybe even a little bit of wisdom - anywhere you can get it.
So after more than one, two, three (takes off shoes and socks), a lot, of months waiting to eat in again, the return to sitting inside an actual restaurant needed to be approached with absolute clearheadedness.
Those months of waiting and the easing back towards something like it used to be with a couple of al fresco meals, beholden to the weather, has finally (hopefully) brought us here.
Although concerns about variants continue to swell, the lockdown of the first more than third of the year, along with the vaccination programme, has enabled hospitality to reopen in some form, and restaurants to not only open their doors but actually let you walk through them.
So which door to go through? For advice - for that little bit of wisdom I was talking about - an unimpeachable source was needed. Wham! were needed.
"If you're gonna do it, do it right (right)." You said it, George.
First time back needed to be somewhere special, so first time back was Overwood.
Sitting above Balloo House in Killinchy, with its Kopa charcoal oven blazing away and giving the place both its name and favoured cooking method, Overwood has been a star in the culinary sky since it opened two summers ago.
The star and the wood continues to burn, even if the screens between tables in the handsome but homely dining room tell you some things have changed completely since it opened. Thankfully, the food isn't one of them.
After a cocktail on the terrace, which the week before was full of Balloo House tables to provide the outdoor seating required by Covid regulations, we head in to be spoiled.
And that's what Overwood specialises in - making you feel like you're being indulged at every turn.
And the best way to start that is with huge Millbay oysters with buttermilk and dill.
In some ways they're the star attraction because they're flawless, though Mother Nature has done all the work.
It would take immense hamfistedness to mess these up and it's in that spirit that our meal at Overwood continues.
Doing just enough with superb ingredients like this to elevate them before setting them down gently in front of you is what Overwood is all about.
You could easily break the bank and the top button on your trousers on the sides.
The last time here, just after it opened two years ago, I was heroically getting to the bottom of a bowl of ash-baked Comber potatoes and a whole Cavanbert cheese, a tower of Olympic grade onion rings arrived at another table. I did exceptionally well not to roll over and introduce myself.
This time, a wedge of hispi cabbage comes off the grill speckled with a tangle of sweet onion and salty nuggets of bacon.
The chips remain utter wonders, as good as any anywhere, and beg to be dragged through the blue cheese hollandaise.
A superb piece of fillet steak is like a ball of butter that still packs far more flavour than you'd expect from the cut, while there's plenty of skill in having the doorstop of monkfish - with barbecued cauliflower, curry-spiced giant cous cous and pickled raisins - cooked perfectly from char-edged crust through to the bone.
Fall-apart sweet pork cheek comes with a piccalilli twanging of mustard, while there's a deep, sweetness to the tomato, prawns and lobster in the pil pil. Every ingredient is at full volume, showing off - look what I can do - and it all works so well.
Desserts are as comforting as the surroundings, with a sticky toffee pudding and lemon posset - the latter with a cracking Parma violet ice cream that could easily have been revolting - leaving us utterly satisfied, perfectly spoilt, and completely stuffed.
But if you've any tempura greens with Korean hot sauce over there that you can't finish. Well, I'm your man.
THE BILL
Oysters x4 £11
Pil pil prawns £11
Pork cheek £9
Fillet steak £32
Monkfish £22
Chips £3.50
Hispi cabbage £4
Blue cheese hollandaise £3
Sticky toffee pudding £7.50
Lemon posset £7.50
Cosmopolitan x2 £18
Bitter lemon x2 £4
Total £132.50
