The Irish Food Hub
Irish Food: What To Eat, Where To Eat It, And How To Book It
Two Americans who moved here and have been eating their way around the island since. This is the hub: the dishes worth ordering and the month to order them, the rooms we book ourselves, the markets worth an hour, and the guided food days worth paying for.
The places we recommend to friends.
The signature piece
Eating In Ireland: What To Order, Where, And What It Costs
The dishes that are actually Irish, the rooms worth booking months ahead, the counters worth walking to, and what a week of eating here costs an American.
Read the essay
Start here
The dining guides
Ten guides by region, from Dublin's starred rooms to the Wild Atlantic Way.
Book a food day
Six days we would pay for ourselves, with live availability.
The travel guide
Seasons, costs, tipping, dietary needs and what may travel home.
Seafood, separately
The shellfish, the counters and the recipes have a hub of their own.
The long argument sits in our essay on eating in Ireland. The questions we are asked most, answered plainly: the food questions page.
What to order
The eight things worth ordering
| Dish | Where | Season | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown crab on brown bread | Anywhere within sight of the Atlantic | Late spring to autumn | The single most Irish thing on any menu, and almost never bad. Picked crab, salted butter, soda bread, lemon. If a coastal room does it well, everything else on the menu will be fine. |
| Native oysters | Galway Bay, Carlingford Lough, the Flaggy Shore | September to April | The flat native is the rare one and the one worth the money. Gigas rock oysters are served all year and are very good. Both belong with stout, not white wine. |
| Oak-smoked salmon | Burren Smokehouse, Ummera, Connemara | All year | Hand sliced, thick cut, and a completely different food from the machine-cut supermarket sheets. This is also the one thing worth carrying home. |
| Dry-aged Irish beef | Dublin steak rooms, Cork and Kildare country houses | All year | Grass fed for most of the year, which is the whole point. Ask for the aging and the county. Any room that cannot answer both is not the room. |
| Spring lamb | Kerry, Wicklow, Connemara and Mourne | April to July | Mountain lamb from the Comeraghs or Connemara is worth ordering over anything imported. It arrives on menus in April and is finest in early summer. |
| Farmhouse cheese | Sheridans, the English Market, any good country house board | All year, best autumn | Durrus, Gubbeen, Milleens, Cashel Blue, Coolea. Ireland's quiet triumph of the last forty years, and half the reason to keep the cheese course. |
| Soda bread and butter | Everywhere, and it is the tell | All year | Judge a room by the bread it puts down before you order. Warm, dense, dark, with cultured Irish butter. If the bread is an afterthought, so is the kitchen. |
| A proper full Irish | Country houses and the good Dublin hotels | All year | Rashers, sausage, black and white pudding, grilled tomato, egg, and brown bread. Eat one, not seven. Skip the buffet version at scale hotels. |
Where we eat
Six rooms we book ourselves
Ballymaloe House
Shanagarry, County Cork
The farmhouse dinner that started it all. Long table, one menu, garden fifty yards away. Stay the night.
Reserve directAniar
Galway
A Michelin star built entirely on the west's shoreline and hedgerows. Book eight weeks out, take the pairing.
Reserve directChapter One
Dublin
The most complete dining room in the country. Two stars, and the lunch menu is the value on the whole island.
Reserve directLinnane's Lobster Bar
New Quay, County Clare
The end of a pier, a tin tray, the Burren behind you. Our first choice for lunch anywhere in Ireland.
Reserve directMourne Seafood Bar
Belfast
Grows its own shellfish. Plain room, consistently the best value in the north.
Reserve directThe Oak Room at Adare Manor
Adare, County Limerick
The grandest room in Ireland and the one that most justifies the jacket. Book with the stay.
Reserve direct
Guided days
The food days worth booking
Galway Food Tours walking tasting
Galway city · About 2 hours 30 minutes · from €85
Sheridans, the market, the bay's shellfish, with a guide who knows the growers. The fastest way to understand west of Ireland food.
Check dates and bookHowth seafood and craft beer trail
Howth, County Dublin · About 3 hours · from €89
Thirty minutes out on the DART to a working fishing harbour, eating along the pier. The best half day in Dublin for anybody who came for the sea.
Check dates and bookAran Islands food and heritage day
Inishmore, County Galway · About 5 hours · from €95
The islands, the stone walls, and the food that came out of a place with no soil. Take the early ferry and the late one back.
Check dates and bookLough Neagh shoreline food and drink tour
County Antrim, from Belfast · About 4 hours · from £75
Northern Ireland's inland fishery, eels and all, with the smokers and growers. Dinner at Mourne Seafood in Belfast after.
Check dates and bookPrivate oyster tour and tasting by the Flaggy Shore
New Quay, County Clare · About 2 hours · from €120 for two
Out to the beds with the people who grow them, then a tasting on the shore. Lunch at Linnane's at the end of the pier after.
Check dates and bookBallymaloe Cookery School day course
Shanagarry, East Cork · A full day · from €245
The hundred-acre farm that taught modern Ireland to cook. Day courses sell out months ahead. Book direct, because there is no reseller worth using.
Book direct
Prices, cancellation terms and the operator's own link beside ours: the food booking page.
Read next
The dining guides
- Dublin at the Table. The ten Dublin rooms we book ourselves, from the tasting counters to the ones you can walk into.
- Dublin's Michelin restaurants. Every starred room in the city, what each costs, and which two are worth the flight.
- Brunch in Dublin. Where to eat on a Saturday morning without queuing for ninety minutes.
- Afternoon tea in Dublin. The three that justify the price and the ones we would skip.
- Ballymaloe and Beyond. The cookery school, the country house beside it, and the rooms we would book around them.
Buy it
Markets and counters
- The English Market, Cork city. Two hundred years old and still a working market rather than a food court. Buy cheese, buy tripe if you are brave, eat upstairs at the Farmgate.
- Sheridans Cheesemongers, Galway, Dublin, Meath. The people who saved Irish farmhouse cheese. Ask what is eating well this month and buy that.
- Saint George's Market, Belfast. Friday, Saturday and Sunday only. The best single morning in Belfast, and the food hall is genuinely good.
- Burren Smokehouse, Lisdoonvarna, County Clare. Vacuum-sealed oak-smoked salmon that travels home legally and costs a third of American prices.
Oysters have their own hub, and so does Irish whiskey.
Build the trip around it
Where we would stay for a food trip
Hayfield Manor
Cork City
Ten minutes from the English Market and inside striking distance of Ballymaloe and Kinsale.
Glenlo Abbey Hotel
County Galway
A base for Galway's restaurants and the Saturday market without sleeping in the noise.
BrookLodge & Macreddin Village
County Wicklow
The Strawberry Tree cooks wild and organic only. The one Irish dining room built around its own supply.
The weeks this fits inside
7 Days in Greater Dublin: The Definitive Itinerary
Four nights in Dublin, three in Wicklow. The base change at Day 5 is the trick most itineraries miss.
7 Quiet Days in the West
Two houses, no rush, seven days. The West held at the pace it actually keeps.
7 Days for the Second Trip
Three bases, no first-time beats, the Ireland the second trip is for.
Common questions
Irish food, answered
Seven Days
The Wild Atlantic Journey
The Printed Edit
Take The Wild Atlantic Journey with you.
The travel-ready version of our 7-day route. Bases, drives, hotels and the bookings to make first.
The version readers print and bring with them.