Travel + Leisure - India & South Asia
ISLE OF PLENTY
Among the atmospheric hills and mist-covered bogs of Connemara, in County Galway, local farmers and producers are quietly redefining Irish cuisine.
claim to fame for the past 68 years has been the John Wayne film The Quiet Man, and a whole tourism circuit revolves around it: walk the Quiet Man Bridge in Derryglinna; have a drink in Pat Cohan’s Bar in Cong, which featured in the movie; stay at Ashford Castle, which screens the movie weekly. But long before the area was associated with the film, it was known for sheep.
CConnemara sits at the edge of the Atlantic, a hunk of land in County Galway whose headlands reach into the sea like gnarled fingers. It’s part of the rocky, rugged coast that Ireland’s tourism department has rebranded the Wild Atlantic Way. As you move inland from Galway Bay, the ground swells into neon-green hills criss-crossed with low stone walls and populated by grazing sheep, their coats spraypainted to distinguish one herd from another. The streaks of pink and blue wash out when their wool is processed for knitting and weaving—both traditional crafts in the region.
In addition to clothing, these animals have provided a source of food for
centuries. Connemara lamb is to Ireland what Iberian hogs are to Spain, beloved by chefs like Kim Young and Reinaldo Seco of the Misunderstood Heron, a food truck overlooking the steely blue Killary Fjord. Young and Seco are part of a new wave of enterprising Connemara residents who are helping forge a new culinary identity for the region, in part by changing perceptions of what is good to eat—and how it should be eaten. They stuff lamb into samosas and braise it in a Chilean-style stew, a preparation that earned them last year’s coveted Georgina Campbell Guides Award (the Irish equivalent of a James Beard Award) for best street food in the country.
Over in Oughterard, on the western shore of Ireland’s largest body of water, Lake Corrib, father and son James and Justin McGeough cure lamb at their gourmet market and butcher shop, McGeough’s Connemara Fine Foods. The charcuterie is as sheer and rosy as stained glass. It’s sold alongside blocks of cheddar and bottles of cider and a hundred other edible souvenirs.
The McGeoughs supply the lamb to the nearby Powers Thatch, a cheery pub with a crackling peat fire and the best brown bread I tasted in Ireland. Notes of garlic, rosemary, and juniper emerged as the cured lamb came to room temperature on the pub’s meat and cheese board, which I shared with another Connemara artisan, Brigid Brophy. She’s based in Barna, where she makes her sinusclearing Lodge Barna Mustards with herbs from her garden, and local gin and beer.
building in the town of Rossaveal, marine biologist Cindy O’Brien stood at the stove, sautéing abalone with scoops of soft gold butter. As they sizzled in the foaming fat, the air clouded and the windows fogged, turning the kitchen into a Kerrygold hotbox.
Californian by birth, O’Brien moved to Connemara with her Irish husband 25 years ago and founded Connemara Abalone (abalone.ie) in 2001. She’s of this place, but not from it—not unlike her abalone, which she raises in the
abalone is eaten with sauce, “because it doesn’t have any flavour.” O’Brien laughed at the thought. “I told him he’s eating the wrong abalone.”
knit together Connemara’s misty bogs, green hills, and soft grey beaches, and local tour guide Pádraic Ó Ráighne knows them all. The lifelong resident also knows every cook, farmer, butcher, brewer, and bartender carving out niches in this stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface of the potential for food and agricultural tourism,” Ó Ráighne told me as we drove to Lettermore, an island in a rocky archipelago scattered like stepping stones in the North Atlantic. It’s where he started his outfit, Connemara Pub Tours, in 2015. (In true Connemara can’t-knock-the-hustle fashion, he’s also the voice of Ernie on the Gaelic version of Sesame Street.) One stop on his circuit, Tigh Lee, a farmhouse with red window frames and a thatch of spiky palms out front, was a favourite for its friendly hospitality and Irish dancing. While those things remain, lately Ó Ráighne has been bringing people to Tigh Lee for the seaweed menu.
As in Rossaveal, seaweed colours Lettermore’s beaches. “The Irish used it for cosmetic and medicinal purposes for centuries, but never for food,” said Aonghus Lee, who owns Tigh Lee.
After working in Dublin for a decade, Lee moved home to take over the pub his grandfather founded in 1972. He created a new menu
featuring dulse and kelp from Connemara Seaweed Co., the brand started by his uncle Noel Lee in 2014. “We’re using seaweed in everything,” Aonghus said, setting out savoury scones and brown bread speckled with dulse. I dipped a spoon into a steaming bowl of chowder and pulled up soft hunks of fish. You don’t see the seaweed (it flavours the stock), but you taste it—a briny, vegetal umami.
On our way out, ferocious rain thrashed the road to Inverin, a charming town and the headquarters of the Gaelic television studio Telegael. Weather is always on the surface in Connemara, less an atmospheric phenomenon than a mercurial neighbour upstairs. “Because we’re beside the sea, we get a lot of rain,” said Kate Fennell. As a volunteer at An Garraí Glas farm, she meant this as a selling point. We met her in the greenhouse behind a Telegael film lot— an unlikely place for a farm, but then, anywhere in Connemara was unlikely when An Garraí Glas was founded in 2013. “Farming went out of fashion, and because traditionally we sowed what we ate—cabbage and onions and potatoes—people didn’t think other crops could grow here.”
They can: radishes, carrots, peas, broad beans, kale, zucchini, kohlrabi, squash, and more overflow from the farm’s roadside stand in Inverin. An Garraí Glas also supplies several restaurants and stores, like Sullivan’s Country Grocer, in Oughterard.
As we left Inverin, we passed through Ballynahown, where long, humpbacked ridges of soil were shaggy with summer greens. When the season ends, Fennell and her fellow volunteers will walk the farm in bulky Irish-wool sweaters, blanketing each row with its own version of winter insulation: a tangled, shimmering mat of black and copper seaweed.