Michelin-star dining in Doolin does not disappoint

One of the Irish good news stories from the launch of the new Michelin Guide earlier this year was the award of a star to Homestead Cottage in Doolin, a new restaurant from husband-and-wife team Robbie and Sophie McCauley. The couple — he’s Scottish, she’s French — met some years back when they worked alongside one another at Gregans Castle nearby.

When Robbie left Gregans last year, he and Sophie took the lease on a former pizza restaurant in Luogh North, a little outside Doolin. (If you’re staying in the town, you’ll need to drive or book a taxi — we found John of atlanticwayexcursions.ie, who also does tours of the area for visitors in a swanky new minibus, very helpful.) They made it their own in a very short space of time, opening in June 2023. The couple don’t have backers so did all the work themselves with the help of friends, determined to keep as much of the character of the original building as they could. Somehow they managed all this with a new baby and a toddler, to which the only possible reaction is ‘chapeau!’

Outside, the cottage is picture-postcard cute, its roof covered in Luogh slate, the raised beds for growing this year’s crops ready and waiting to be planted once the weather permits. At their home nearby, Robbie and Sophie have two large poly tunnels and a 70-tree orchard, and recently planted 700 soft-fruit bushes. Along with a flock of ducks and the eggs from 30 hens, everything is destined for the Homestead Cottage kitchen. By summer, Robbie reckons they will be growing 70pc of the fruit and vegetables for the restaurant themselves.

Inside, the restaurant occupies three charming rooms. The tables are made from floorboards reclaimed from an old mill in Sixmilebridge, there are family photos dotted around and, over the fireplace, old milk cartons from Robbie’s uncle’s dairy. He spent time in the area as a child and now it is his home.

We’ve driven from Dublin and missed lunch so we fall upon the breads. The house-made sourdough focaccia, slathered in Glenilen butter, is particularly good.

‘Last summer’s potatoes & onions’ is a crunchy little rosti with smoked onion emulsion topped with three-cornered leek, simple and pleasing, while Flaggy Shore oysters are lightly marinated in elderflower vinegar, mandarin, nori and sugar kelp. The oyster resurgence that’s happened over the past few years shows no sign of abating and I hope it never does.

A salad of St Tola goat’s curds with ribbons of kohlrabi, olive tapenade, fermented green tomatoes, pickled cucumber and sorrel is fresh and lovely, while Aran Island mackerel cured in kelp comes with chewy beetroot from last year’s glut, which has been dehydrated and rehydrated with apple juice, before being combined with pickled apples, and grapes, and dressed with Cuinneog buttermilk, horseradish and dill. This is a simpler dish than that list of ingredients might imply, and very delicious.

Cod with celeriac — first salt-baked, then finished with brown butter — gets a dressing of clam stock with miso, with pickled walnuts for texture and sea purslane and shore herbs (foraged by the McCauleys on their ‘days off’) for salinity.

For me, the standout dish is the North Clare lamb, served in two parts. The first is a chop from the rack, pan-fried and finished in the oven, with white asparagus, violet artichoke and wild garlic puree; the second a powerfully meaty rissole made from the trimmings, liver and kidney served with a wild garlic pearl barley risotto. “We are lucky with our lamb,” Robbie says to me on the phone a few days later. “We know exactly where the animals are from.” The fish and seafood all comes from local fishermen too.

We finish with three desserts: a millionaire shortbread with dark chocolate delice, chewy caramel and a tiny dollop of malt ice cream; ‘Rhubarb & custard’, a rich rice pudding with vanilla custard, poached rhubarb, rhubarb sorbet, sorrel and pickled ginger; and a sliver of polenta cake with dried meadowsweet, blood orange and mascarpone made in-house from local raw milk. Each is excellent.

I’ve written before about my growing impatience with tasting menus, but this is one that works and feels perfectly balanced. With a bottle of Familie Reinisch Pinot Noir (€60), two glasses of dessert wine (€12 each) and water, our bill comes to €278.50 before service, which is friendly and faultless. This is without doubt a destination restaurant; we loved everything about it.