A note from Deborah. Read her editorial perspective
Lahinch is the easier version of the food problem we described in Ballybunion, and in some ways the harder one. It is easier because West Clare is a real food region. The boats land at Liscannor a few miles up the coast, the Burren farms sit inland from the road, and the towns around Lahinch have kept independent kitchens open for years because the summer crowd is a mix of Irish holidaymakers, walkers, and golfers rather than one narrow trade. It is harder because Lahinch itself is a promenade town, and along that promenade sits the standard set of resort restaurants that a family from Limerick or a coach from Dublin will happily fill on a July night. The good rooms are here. So are the tourist traps. Americans who arrive at Lahinch after a round on the Old Course, or after a morning at the Cliffs of Moher, often eat the wrong dinner on the first night because everything looks the same at eight o'clock on the seafront. It is the wrong dinner, and it is easily avoided. We have played Lahinch every year we have been able to, and here is what we book across two or three nights in West Clare, in what order, and why.
Lahinch, After The Wind Drops
Lahinch the village runs on one road, the promenade above the strand, and a short spur inland toward the golf club. On that stretch you have three kinds of room. There are two or three seafood kitchens that take the harbour at Liscannor seriously and cook off what came in that morning. There is a longer list of casual promenade restaurants that lean on pizza, burgers, and a chowder bowl for the family trade. And there is a small clutch of pubs that pour a proper pint and, on the right night, run a session in the corner. That is Lahinch on the ground.
What Lahinch also has, and what changes the trip completely, is a twenty-minute driving radius that opens onto three of the strongest food villages on the west coast. Doolin sits ten minutes north for the music and the Aran ferries. Ennistymon sits ten minutes east for the daytime food and the bookshop cafes. Liscannor sits five minutes up the coast for the seafood bars where the boats actually land. And Ballyvaughan, a proper thirty-five minutes north through the Burren, holds one of the finest country house dining rooms in the west of Ireland. The correct trip does not eat every night on the Lahinch promenade. The correct trip uses Lahinch as a base and eats out from it.
The First Table, Wind Still In Your Ears
A late round at Lahinch on a long summer evening will finish at seven or half past, and by the time you have walked back to the hotel, changed, and walked out again it is nearly nine. That is a tight window on the promenade, and the wrong instinct is to pick the first bright frontage on the strand road. Our rule for the first night is to book a table at a working seafood kitchen and to ring it directly the week you book the tee time, not the day you fly.
The room we send groups to for the arrival dinner is Barrtra Seafood Restaurant, a family-run kitchen a mile south of the village on the coast road, where a small dining room looks out over Liscannor Bay and the menu is a short honest list of what came off the boat that morning. You will eat a bowl of chowder, a Liscannor crab claw plate, a piece of hake off the Clare coast, and you will drink a bottle of white off a page long list that leans French. It is a twelve minute drive from the clubhouse and it takes bookings by phone. If Barrtra is dark, which happens outside the main season, our second call is the dining room at Vaughan Lodge in the village itself, a small hotel restaurant that runs a considered modern Irish menu and holds tables late for arriving guests. Both rooms understand a foursome of golfers off a long day, and neither will chase you out at ten.
The Seafood Question, And Where To Ignore It
Lahinch is a rare Irish golf town where the seafood story is actually true, and where you can tell the honest room from the tourist plate in about thirty seconds. The honest rooms buy off Liscannor and Doolin pier, work a short menu, and change the specials board on the day. The tourist rooms buy off a national supplier, print a laminated menu that stays the same in April and August, and lean on a bowl of chowder that came out of a tub. You are paying similar money at both. You are eating very different plates.
Alongside Barrtra, the two rooms we go back to for seafood are Vaughan's Anchor Inn in Liscannor, a five minute drive up the coast, where the bar plate at lunch is what the boat landed that morning, and Randaddy's on the Lahinch promenade for a casual grill night when the group is tired and does not want to drive. Randaddy's is not a destination dinner. It is a decent late plate on the seafront after a long day, and it takes a walk-in table on most weeknights outside July. What we would not do in Lahinch is walk into the largest lit frontage on the promenade on a Saturday in August and hope for the best. That is where the tourist trap sits, and that is where the American foursome most often eats its worst meal of the trip.
The Night Doolin Steals From You
The pub question in Lahinch is really two questions. The first is which pub in the village pours the pint we want after dinner, and the second is which night we drive to Doolin for a proper traditional session. Both have clean answers. In the village, Kenny's Bar on Main Street is where the golfers and the locals actually drink, and where the pint is being pulled by someone who has been pulling it for years. It is the round after the celebration dinner, not the round before it.
The music night is a drive, and it is worth it. Doolin sits ten minutes north on the coast road, and on any given evening in the season two of its three pubs will run a session that starts around nine and runs past midnight. Gus O'Connor's is the room most groups have heard of, and it earns the visit on a good night. McGann's, up the hill, is the room we prefer when the crowd at O'Connor's is heavy with coaches. McDermott's is the third, and on the right Wednesday it is the best of the three. Book a driver from Lahinch, or nominate one from the foursome, and treat the evening as the folk night of the trip. Do not try to do music and a proper dinner on the same night. Eat early at the Roadside Tavern in Lisdoonvarna on the way, or eat late at O'Connor's off the bar menu, and let the music be the point.
Lunch In Ennistymon, Then The Burren Detour
Ennistymon sits ten minutes inland from Lahinch, a proper working Clare town with a hill of coloured shopfronts and, on the right day, one of the better daytime food scenes on the west coast. Our foursome uses it as the lunch stop between a morning round at Lahinch and an afternoon drive north to the Cliffs of Moher or into the Burren. The room we go back to is Byrne's on Main Street, a bar and dining room over the falls, which does a plate of Burren lamb at lunch and pours a proper pint. Alongside it, the Cheese Press is the coffee and sandwich stop we send anyone with an hour to kill and a book to read.
The Burren drive is the other move Lahinch makes possible. North of Ennistymon the road climbs onto the limestone plateau and eventually drops into Ballyvaughan on Galway Bay, thirty-five minutes from your hotel. The reason to make that drive is Gregans Castle Hotel, a small country house above the village whose dining room is one of the two or three best kitchens on the west coast of Ireland. Book that room for the celebration night of the trip, drive it in the long summer evening, and let the drive back down through the Burren after dinner be the story of the trip you tell at home. The Cliffs of Moher sit twenty minutes north of Lahinch on the same coast road and deserve a morning of their own. They do not deserve dinner. The restaurants at the visitor centre are for the coach trade.
The Dinner That Marks The Round
The celebration dinner after Lahinch is the meal Americans most often plan too late and most often regret when they do. Our rule is to book it the week you book the tee times, not the week you fly. In practice we place it at one of two rooms. The first is Gregans Castle in Ballyvaughan, the country house drive we already described, which runs a set menu of Clare and Burren produce and a wine list that reads like a small city merchant's. The second, when the group is not up for the drive, is the dining room at Moy House, a small hotel a mile south of Lahinch above the ocean, whose kitchen runs a short modern Irish menu in a nine table room with a fire and a view of the strand.
Both rooms take a booking for four with real notice. Both are the kind of room where the toast at the end of the round lands correctly. Both require you to dress for it, and both reward that. If the group is small and wants to walk to dinner from the hotel, the answer is the second sitting at Vaughan Lodge in the village, with the eight o'clock table held from the week you booked the round. You will not get a tasting menu. You will get a plate of Clare lamb or a whole fish landed at Liscannor that morning, a bottle of something French off a short list, and a walk back to the hotel along the strand road at ten. That is the correct shape of the evening after the Old Course, and it is available for the group that plans it a month out and unavailable for the group that walks in.
How Two Or Three Nights In West Clare Fall Together
The trip we have run most often at Lahinch is three nights, not two, because West Clare is one of the few golf regions in Ireland where the food and the landscape justify a third night without inventing filler. The sequence, refined across many visits, runs this way. Night one is the arrival dinner at Barrtra south of the village, booked from home the month before, with a taxi from the hotel and a taxi back. You have driven from Shannon or flown into Dublin and then driven across, you are tired, and you want to eat one honest plate of seafood on the coast road rather than pick a promenade room by its lit sign.
Night two, which is almost always the night after the Old Course, is the celebration. If the group is dressing for it we drive north to Gregans Castle in Ballyvaughan and book the eight o'clock table. If the group is walking to dinner we hold the sitting at Moy House or Vaughan Lodge. Night three, when the trip stretches, is Doolin for the music. Eat early at the Roadside Tavern on the way up, walk down to McGann's or Gus O'Connor's for the session, and let the last night of the trip be the one you tell friends about. That is the sequence. Barrtra for the arrival, Gregans or Moy House for the celebration, Doolin for the music. It works in May, it works in September, and after many trips we would not change the order of it. The full three day shape of the trip, including the arrival at Shannon and the Cliffs morning on day three, is in our companion piece on three days around Lahinch.
Further reading from the Notebook
- Where to eat near Ballybunion
- Where to eat near Slieve Donard
- Three days around Royal County Down
- Royal County Down, shot by shot
- Kerry or Connemara, how to decide
- The Cliffs of Moher, on your own terms
- Where to sleep in Ireland
- Build your trip around this round
- Golf itineraries, five and seven day
- The Printed Edit, Greens and Gorse