A note from Deborah. Read her editorial perspective
Ballybunion has a food problem, and it is the same problem it has had for decades. It is a small seaside town at the north tip of County Kerry, and unlike Killarney or Dingle it does not run on tourism dinners twelve months of the year. It runs on a golf course, and on a summer week of Irish holidaymakers, and on a working harbour up the road at Ballylongford. Americans arrive off a long drive from Shannon, look at the four blocks that make up the village, and quietly panic about where the trip's meals are going to happen. The panic is misplaced. There is enough good food inside a twenty-minute drive to feed a foursome for three nights without repeating a room. What there is not is a Newcastle-style promenade of independent kitchens, and what the town rewards is a small amount of planning done before you fly. We have played the Old Course and the Cashen every year we have been able to, and here is what we book, in what order, and why.
Ballybunion, After Eighteen
Ballybunion the village is four blocks of coloured shopfronts on a hill above the strand, and a short drive down to the clubhouse. The food sorts honestly into four groups. There are two or three independent kitchens in the village that will feed a foursome properly on the nights they are open. There is a working hotel dining room at the top of the town that runs a set menu most nights and does it well. There is a clutch of pubs along Main Street that serve honest bar food at lunch and early dinner. And there is Tralee, twenty-five minutes down the road, where the choice widens to a proper small-city set of restaurants and where the reservation you did not make in Ballybunion will save the night.
What the village does not have, and this catches Americans out, is a room open every night of the week. Sunday and Monday in shoulder season are thin. The best independent kitchen in town might be dark on the exact night you have booked the tee time. This is not a failing of the town. It is a signal that you are somewhere real. The correct response is to know the calendar before you fly, book what you can before you leave home, and hold Tralee as the second night when the first night in the village is closed.
The Table That Holds The Round Together
A late tee time on the Old Course in June is a long day. You will finish the eighteenth at seven fifteen if the round is quick, closer to eight if it is not, and by the time you are back at the hotel and out of golf clothes you are looking at a nine o'clock sitting. That is a problem in a town where most kitchens have taken last orders by half past eight. Our rule for the first night is simple. Book a table at the room in the village that seats late, or accept that dinner is being eaten in the hotel where you are already sleeping.
The room that will most reliably take a foursome at half past eight in Ballybunion in the season is the dining room at The Nineteenth, a chef-run kitchen on Main Street that leans modern Irish. The menu is short, the wine list is honest, and the kitchen understands a table of golfers who have walked eighteen holes into an Atlantic wind and want dinner rather than theatre. You will eat Kerry lamb or a piece of Dingle Bay hake, you will drink a bottle of something French off a one-page list, and you will be back at the hotel by ten thirty. Ring the restaurant directly, three weeks out, and ask for the second sitting. If the room is dark that night, which happens on Sundays and Mondays in the shoulder season, our next call is the dining room at Cliff House Hotel above the strand, which does a set menu that ends late and does not chase you out.
Ballybunion Village, Or The Drive Inland To Listowel
The recurring question we get from American foursomes is whether to eat every night in Ballybunion or drive to Tralee for one of them. Our answer, after many trips, is drive to Tralee once. The town is twenty-five minutes south along the R551, the road is quiet after eight in the evening, and the food scene is a full step wider than what Ballybunion holds. Book a driver from the hotel or the clubhouse and settle the fare in advance, or nominate a designated driver from the foursome and hold them to it. The bill for the taxi will be less than a mid-range bottle on the wine list, and it buys you a night where the whole table can order what it wants.
In Tralee the two rooms we go back to are The Roast House on Denny Street, a small room that runs a proper grill and a considered wine list, and The Bianconi on Ashe Street for a more relaxed night. Neither is going to be the meal of your Ireland trip. Both are honest, both take a booking for four without theatre, and both are far and away better than a second night in the village at a hotel bar because the independent kitchen you wanted was already booked out. Book Tralee for the middle night of a three-night trip. Keep Ballybunion for the arrival and the celebration.
The Pub Where The Round Finally Settles
There are five or six pubs on Main Street in Ballybunion, and if you spent every night walking from one to the next you would have a fine week and remember none of it. The one worth an evening is Kilcooly's Country House Bar, at the top of the town, where the room has been serving locals and golfers for generations and where the pint is being poured by someone who has been pulling it for twenty years. On a summer Friday there will often be a session in the corner that started because someone brought a fiddle, and the room fills without ever feeling like a tourist stop. This is the pub we send anyone who wants a pint that is not being poured for an American in golf shoes.
The bar at Cliff House Hotel is a different room and a useful one. It sits above the beach, the windows face west, and on a summer evening the light lasts until half past ten. We use it as the drink before dinner on the night we are eating in the village, and we use Kilcooly's as the drink after dinner on the night we are eating at the hotel. That is the honest sequence. A whiskey at Cliff House before the sun goes into the Atlantic, and a pint at Kilcooly's to close the evening on the way back down the hill.
The Dinner You Book For The Cliffs
A round on the Old Course at Ballybunion is one of the great days in Irish golf, and the dinner that follows it deserves more thought than the arrival meal. Our rule for the celebration night is to book the best room within a half-hour drive and dress for it. In practice, that is either the dining room at Ballygarry Estate on the edge of Tralee, a country house hotel that runs a proper kitchen and a full wine list, or the dining room at The Listowel Arms in Listowel, twenty minutes north, which does a shorter modern Irish menu in a Georgian room with a river view. Both take a booking for four with real notice. Both are the kind of room where the group toast at the end of the round lands correctly.
If the celebration is a small group and you want to walk to it, the answer is dinner at The Nineteenth in Ballybunion on the night after the round, with the eight o'clock sitting held from the week you booked the tee times. You will not get a tasting menu. You will get a plate of local lamb or a whole fish landed that morning, a bottle of wine off a short list, and a walk back to the hotel through the village at ten. That is the correct shape of the evening after the Old Course, and the one American groups most often get right when they plan it early and most often get wrong when they try to walk in.
The Middle Meal, Between Two Rounds
If you are playing the Old and the Cashen on the same day, which we recommend when the weather is kind and the legs are willing, lunch has to be at the clubhouse and it has to be quick. The clubhouse dining room does a serviceable sandwich and soup service, a plate of Kerry stew in the season, and a small hot menu that changes with the day. Eat there, drink a glass of water rather than a pint, and be back on the first tee of the Cashen inside seventy-five minutes. This is not a lunch to linger over. It is a lunch to survive a second round on a course that reads shorter than the Old and plays as hard when the wind is up.
If the second tee time is late enough for a proper break, our foursome walks the five minutes up into the village to Daroka, a coffee shop and lunch counter that does honest soups and sandwiches on decent bread, or to a small daytime cafe near the strand that does chowder and a toasted sandwich. Neither is going to be the meal of the trip. Both will feed you well and put you back on the tee awake rather than heavy. Skip a sit-down lunch between rounds. A chowder, a coffee, and the walk back down to the clubhouse is exactly enough.
How The Evenings Fall, In Order
The trip we have run more often than any other is two nights around a single round on the Old Course, sometimes stretched to three nights with a round on the Cashen and a day driving south into Dingle. The food sequence, refined across many visits, runs this way. Night one is the arrival dinner in the hotel where you are sleeping, most often the dining room at Cliff House or the set menu at Ballybunion Golf Hotel. You have driven from Shannon or Kerry airport, you are tired, and you want to eat inside the building. It is the correct decision, and we make it every trip.
Night two, which is almost always the night after the Old Course, is the celebration. If the group is four and dressing for it, we drive to Ballygarry Estate outside Tralee and book the eight o'clock table. If the group is two and wants to walk to dinner, we hold the sitting at The Nineteenth in the village. Night three, when a trip stretches that far, is a drive to Tralee and a table at The Roast House, or a pint and a plate at Kilcooly's if the legs are done. That is the sequence. One arrival night at the hotel, one celebration night after the Old Course, and one honest night in Tralee. It works in May, it works in September, and after many trips we would not change the order of it. For how these dinners fit into the arrival, the round, and the drive back to Shannon, read our itinerary for three days around Ballybunion.
Further reading from the Notebook