The Irish Seafood Hub
Irish Seafood: What To Order, Where To Eat It, And What To Bring Home
Ireland exports most of its best seafood and eats surprisingly little of it. This is the hub we give American friends: the species worth ordering and the month to order them, the rooms that cook them properly, the counters worth buying from, and the guided days worth paying for.
The places we recommend to friends.
The signature piece
Irish Seafood: What To Order, The Month To Order It, And Where
Ireland exports its best shellfish and eats surprisingly little of it. Here is what to order, the month to order it, the rooms that cook it properly, and what may legally travel home.
Read the essay
Start here
Book a seafood day
Five guided days we would pay for ourselves, with live availability.
The fishmongers
Eight counters across the island, and what we would buy at each.
Four recipes
Mussels in cider, a chowder worth the name, crab on brown bread.
Oysters, separately
The bays, the rooms and the season have a hub of their own.
The long argument sits in our essay on Irish seafood. Seasons, safety, allergies and what may travel home: the seafood questions page.
What to order
The species, and the month
| Species | Where | Season | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dublin Bay prawn | Landed at Howth, Clogherhead and Kilmore Quay | Best April to October | A langoustine, not a prawn, and the best thing in Irish water. Grilled with butter, shell on. Most of the catch is exported, so order it when you see it. |
| Brown crab | The whole west coast, best from Castletownbere and Donegal | All year, fullest in autumn | Claws in garlic butter on the coast, crab meat on brown bread in the towns. Cheap, abundant and consistently better than the lobster beside it on the menu. |
| Lobster | Kerry, Clare, Connemara and Down | May to October | Expensive and seasonal. Worth it once, at a pier, in the month it landed. Anywhere serving it in February is serving it frozen. |
| Mussels | Killary Harbour, Bantry Bay, Wexford | September to April | Rope grown in the fjord at Killary, which gives clean shells and full meat. A pot with cider and cream costs almost nothing and beats most main courses. |
| Wild Atlantic salmon and smoked salmon | Burren Smokehouse, Ummera in Cork, Connemara | Smoked all year, wild strictly limited | Wild salmon is tightly quota-controlled and mostly unavailable. What you want is properly oak-smoked organic salmon, which travels home and is a fraction of American prices. |
| Hake, turbot and John Dory | The south and west day boats | All year | The whitefish worth ordering when the board says it landed that morning. Skip anything described only as 'catch of the day' with no boat and no port. |
| Herring, mackerel and sprat | Everywhere, cheaply | Late summer into autumn | The cheapest good eating in Ireland. Smoked mackerel pâté on brown bread is a national dish nobody calls one. |
Where we eat it
Six rooms, coast to coast
Linnane's Lobster Bar
New Quay, County Clare
The end of a pier, a tin tray, and the Burren behind you. Our first choice on the whole island.
Reserve directMoran's Oyster Cottage
Kilcolgan, County Galway
Seven generations on Galway Bay. Oysters first, crab claws second.
Reserve directMourne Seafood Bar
Belfast
Grows its own shellfish in Carlingford and Dundrum. Plain room, consistently the best value seafood in the north.
Reserve directOut of the Blue
Dingle, County Kerry
No fish landed, no opening. The most honest sign in Irish hospitality, and the menu changes daily because of it.
Reserve directFishy Fishy
Kinsale, County Cork
The Kinsale room everybody names, and it has stayed good. Book lunch rather than dinner and sit outside.
Reserve directAniar
Galway
A Michelin star built on the west's shoreline. Book eight weeks out and take the wine pairing.
Reserve direct
Guided days
The seafood days worth booking
Howth coastal 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 bookGalway 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 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. Pair it with lunch at Linnane's at the end of the pier.
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 book
Prices, cancellation terms and the operator's own link beside ours: the seafood booking page.
Buy it
The counters we use
- Kish Fish, Dublin. Dublin Bay prawns and whatever whitefish the chefs were buying that morning.
- Nicky's Plaice, Howth. Cooked crab claws and smoked haddock, eaten on the pier.
- Gannet Fishmongers, Galway. Whole turbot, and the Kelly oysters if you are self-catering.
- Sheridans Cheesemongers, Galway. Oak-smoked salmon, Irish butter and a wheel of Coolea for the flight home.
Cook it
Four things worth making
- Killary mussels in cider and cream. The cheapest good dinner in Ireland, and the one we cook the night we get home from the west.
- The seafood chowder every Irish pub claims. Every bar between Kinsale and Donegal serves one. Most are flour and cream. This is the version worth making.
- Crab on brown bread, the way the west serves it. The single most Irish plate of food there is, and it depends entirely on the quality of the two ingredients.
- The smoked salmon plate, assembled not cooked. What to do with the vacuum pack you carried home from the Burren Smokehouse.
Build the trip around it
Where we would stay for a seafood trip
Deer Park Hotel Howth
County Dublin
Above the harbour that lands the fish. Walk to the pier counters before breakfast.
Ballynahinch Castle
Connemara
Oysters, langoustines and the Connemara coast within an hour of the front door.
Perryville House
Kinsale, County Cork
The best-eating small town in Ireland, and the boats are visible from the room.
The weeks this fits inside
7 Days Walking the West of Ireland
Seven days, three bases, no walking day shorter than two hours or longer than five. The Atlantic the way it was meant to be met.
7 Quiet Days in the West
Two houses, no rush, seven days. The West held at the pace it actually keeps.
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.
Before you order
The questions Americans actually ask
Build the week around the coast
Seafood is a geography decision. Tell us the dates and we will say honestly whether Clare, Kerry, Galway or the Ards peninsula is the week you want, and where to sleep within twenty minutes of the pier.
Plan your seafood trip
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.