Ireland Archives - Neil Sowerby

What’s your beef, Brian Boru? Hawksmoor Dublin, Clontarf Castle and a Viking bloodbath

I’d wager Brian Boru was a prime steak man. As High King of Ireland you wouldn’t go into bloody battle against the Vikings on a plant-based diet. The hero’s full name indeed, Brian Boruma, means ‘Brian of the cattle tributes’. Owning beef on the hoof was a boost in the medieval bragging rights.

Flash forward a thousand years to a new invader from across the sea. Hawksmoor has landed on Dublin’s College Green to a hero’s welcome. The upmarket UK steak restaurant sets out its stall on its Dublin website: “Beef from small community farms from all corners of the island, grazing cattle on rotation on fertile Irish soil.” Apparently it has been easier to source premium grass fed, properly aged stuff in Ireland than for sister ventures in New York and Chicago.

Gazing up at the dramatic domed ceiling we were just glad they have also sourced such an amazing venue. So many of these vast bank recalibrations don’t quite get it right (witness the recent Cut and Craft in Manchester). Here the petrol blue of the bar stool leather and the velvet banquettes is a classy match to all the wood panelling and Corinthian columns. Co-founder Will Beckett reckons it is the most striking of the 13 Hawksmoors (seven in London). It was at the 10th birthday party of their Manchester venue that Will invited us over. Impossible to resist and the food and service more than lived up to Hawksmoor’s own 20 year heritage.

Of course, history is in these halls too. This was the great Bank of Ireland established in 1835 by Daniel O’Connell, ‘The Liberator’. They named Dublin’s main thoroughfare after this astute politico, who probably turned over in his hallowed grave when for a while the premises hosted a branch of Abercrombie and Fitch.

I like to think the ghost of Brian Boru was at our side as we shared a Chateaubriand with beef dripping fries and creamed spinach after starters of native lobster and roasted currach scallops. Did he enjoy the Raul Perez Mencia red from Bierzo? We certainly did. He wasn’t having any of my Cherry Negroni.

We live the Castle dream near the site of an epic battle

In 1014 Brian Boru smashed a Norse-Leinster alliance at the great Battle of Clontarf, losing his own life in the process. 10,000 others fell in the slaughter that ended Viking rule in Ireland. Hours before our Feast of Hawksmoor we had visited Boru’s Well in Clontarf. The ‘Well’ is a drinking fountain erected in 1850 to mark where the Irish warriors refreshed themselves before triumphing on the battlefield. Allegedly.

A further bovine footnote: Clontarf, pronounced Cluain Tarbh in ancient Gaelic, translates as ‘Meadow of the Bull’ because the waves crashing into the beach were said to sound like a panting bull. Hard to reconcile all this with today’s affluent coastal suburb.

With its view across to the Docks and the distant Wicklow Mountains the seafront promenade is perfect for joggers and dog walkers. Keep heading north and you’ll cross a wooden bridge that takes you to Dollymount Beach with its 5km of dunes and North Bull Island Nature Reserve, a sand spit described as a bird watcher’s paradise. Clontarf village has its share of boutique shopping and people-watching cafes.

Walk inland, though, along Castle Avenue past that Well and you come upon a historic castle almost incongruous among the posh new residences that hem it in. Clontarf Castle was erected some 150 years after the battle as part of Dublin’s outer defences and in the early 14th century passed into the hands of the Knights Templar, who made it a monastery. In the 17th century John Vernon, quartermaster of Cromwell’s invading army acquired it and for 300 years it was the family home. One of its chatelaines, Dolly Vernon, captivated Handel, who stayed here prior to the world premiere of the Messiah in Dublin. On a further musical note the first track on Thin Lizzy’s debut album is called The Friendly Ranger at Clontarf Castle.

The building Handel saw (and JMW Turner painted) is no longer there. The Vernons hired the gloriously named architect William Vetruvius Morrison to rebuild it in 1837. This is the Gothic/medieval style structure that may well have inspired Dracula’s Castle. Creator Bram Stoker grew up close by.

*The lobby incorporating medieval stonework*

Luxurious, arty and handily placed – Clontarf Castle Hotel

Today’s Castle has metamorphosed further as a luxury four star hotel, incorporating a contemporary wing housing its 111 bedrooms. The mod cons in our top floor Junior Suite were state of the art but, aided by the presence of a four poster bed and mullioned windows, it felt of another age.

This was more than compounded by the public rooms beyond the soaring lobby where the family motto has been retained on a banner, “Vernon Semper Viret” (Vernon Always Flourishes). It’s all a mixture or old and new, so alongside the suits of armour and Boru references, each floor of the hotel offers a riot of contemporary art. Often quite quirky. ‘Owls with hats’ outside our suite, particularly so.

*Our junior suite with* *its four-poster*

In the absence of old family retainers, the hotel staff were terrific. From the front desk man who provided us with in depth guides to the Castle and wider Clontarf to the old school barman who poured a perfect Guinness for me in the Knight’s Bar. A shame not to be able to dine in Fahrenheit, the lauded main restaurant, but Hawksmoor called.

One reason for choosing Clontarf, its amazing history apart, was easy public transport access to central Dublin, not the easiest place to park in. It was a 15 minute walk to the DART commuter line and a 10 minute ride to Parnell Street Station. What better appetiser for the glorious meal ahead than a stroll through the grounds of Trinity College.

The other reason: Clontarf is only a quiet 15 minute drive back to Dublin Ferry Port. Time on your hands first? Half an hour north of the Castle is breezy Howth with a fine headland walk and great fish dining options. On past evidence I’d go for lobster at the upmarket King Sitric restaurant with rooms. The name commemorates Norse king Sigtrygg Silkbeard, an arch-rival of Brian Boru. Defeated but lived to tell the tale and created Ireland’s first coinage. A history lesson there.

Factfile

Neil Sowerby travelled to Dublin with Irish Ferries. Short break return fares to Ireland start from £214. He took the Dublin Swift, a high speed catamaran which travels from Holyhead to Dublin in just 135 minutes, making it the fastest Irish Sea crossing. It’s the best ferry experience I can recall with a highly efficient boarding process for our car at either end. To be admired too Irish Ferries’ quest for greater sustainability; the Swift has transitioned to using Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, a fossil-free biofuel, as an alternative to conventional diesel.

Highly recommended for this trip is an upgrade to Club Class from £18 per person. It includes priority vehicle boarding, an executive lounge bar (get there early to snap up a panoramic window seat), free wifi, complimentary soft drinks and snacks (and wines on the Irish Sea and Dover-Calais routes).

If you fancy a full meal check out Boylan’s Brasserie, which offers a range from a Full Irish Breakfast at 16.95 euros to mains at 21 euros.

Clontarf Castle Hotel, Castle Ave, Clontarf East, Dublin 3, D03 W5NO, Ireland. +353 1 833 2321.

Hawksmoor, 34 College Green, Dublin 2.

For tourist information go to Visit Ireland and Visit Dublin.

14 June 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Aishling Moore’s golden touch and the wonder of West Cork wasabi

It’s commonplace these days to chart provenance on a menu. At Goldie one supplier name hopped off the list in front of me – Singing Frog Gardens. Alas, no sweetly croaking amphibians feature at Aishling Moore’s Cork restaurant famed for its ‘gill to fin’ sustainable fish cookery. But wasabi root grown in the West Cork backwoods does. It’s a speciality of the Gardens’ Alex Gazzaniga, a cultivator of rare and pungent salads and vegetables not traditionally native to Ireland (or many habitats in Europe, come to that). The name comes from the raucous frogs attracted to the damp forest setting suited to growing wasabi, brassica cousin to horseradish and mustard. Ironically the root thrives in a moist microclimate that can also encourage potato blight.

My Dublin-based colleague, the talented Caitríona Devery, has written two articles for Ireland Eats (wasabi and gardens) on this reclusive market gardener, who moved to Ireland from England 15 years ago and now supplies innovative indie restaurants with what greengrocers used to call ‘queer gear’. Wasabi seems a given for Takashi Miyazaki, guru behind Cork city’s Ichigo Ichie and Miyazaki. He was among Alex’s first customers; Aishling with her almost Japanese attention to fish is another perfect fit.

No question the meal of our recent Irish road trip was at Goldie on Oliver Plunkett Street across the road from equally casual stablemate Elbow Lane. Before seafood called Aishling honed her cooking skills at this fire-led, meat-centric micro-brewhouse (which also name-checks Singing Frog among the butchers and maltsters).

Cork-born Aishling opened Goldie when she was 24, just six months before the pandemic. From the start she was determined to create a sustainable, changing menu from what was landed daily on Ballycotton quayside. Nothing of the available catch was to be wasted, in particular those fish previously thrown back into the sea. The approach is called Whole Catch, the name of the slim volume she published in 2024, the year after she was named Ireland’s Young Chef of the Year. No glossy images, just Nicky Hooper’s characterful illustrations. These include, inside front and back, the golden salmon-shaped weathervane that has crowned the hilltop St Anne’s Church, Shandon since the 1750s and gives its name to the restaurant.

Whole Catch is in essence a pared back primer, charting how to handle fish from the whole raw state to the plate. The recipes are not afraid of powerful global flavours, but the freshest Irish raw materials never seem smothered. Surprises include her favouring the butterflied tails of round fish. From the small plates section we tried the hake tail schnitzel with gherkin and celeriac remoulade and soy cured egg yolk. Utter delight until it was surpassed by the chicken and butter miso sauce that perfectly partnered the firm, sweet flesh of pan-fried John Dory, an unexpected ‘luxury’ fish.

A pudding that is approaching a similar signature dish status is the caramelised white chocolate, Achill Island sea salt, milk sorbet, with a buckwheat tuile. Proof of the sophisticated culinary intelligence at work. Pleasure principle counterpointing the sustainability crusade. Goldie’s Michelin Bib Gourmand is throughly deserved. Surely a star must be close.

Chatting afterwards, Aishling distanced herself from the application of meat butchery/charcuterie techniques as espoused by Australian chef Josh Nyland, whose own manifesto, The Whole Fish Cookbook, echoes hers. “Lots of folk make the connection, but I’d never even heard of him when we opened Goldie. Others compare us with Lir up on the north coast of Ireland, but they follow the Nyland route, making their own fish-based charcuterie. The nearest I’ve got to that is some fish jerky!”

Lir chef patron Stevie McCarry made it to the final of the Great British Menu 2025. The closest Aishling has got to celebrity across the Irish Sea was a couple of appearances on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, the last in November, to celebrate World Fish Day. On her July debut she cooked the Shime Mackerel recipe you’ll find in Whole Catch – which I intended to replicate (the main image is Channel 4’s). It involves a 10 hour sashimi-style marinade of salt, mirin, brown rice vinegar and, crucially, dried kombu kelp (Irish and Japanese in one seasoning). Soy and wasabi to accompany. West Cork wasabi had kindly been posted to me and had to be grated quickly to guarantee its kick. Alas, I was called to a France for a week before I could source the freshest of mackerel, which this dish required. So, to avoid drying out, the surprisingly delicate wasabi was summoned to perk up some hot smoked salmon before my departure.

On my return I bought a couple of Cornish mackerel; from Out of The Blue in Chorlton, Manchester, substituting horseradish from our garden for the wasabi. On Sunday Brunch beetroot ponzu and pickled ginger were the mackerel’s sidekicks. Just some plain roasted beetroot for me, but the dish was drop dead gorgeous.

A major Aishling inspiration is another Brit expat, master fish smoker and ocean activist Sally Barnes, who has been curing wild salmon and other fish at her Woodcock Smokery near Skibbereen since 1979. Aisling confirms: “Conversations with her have massively influenced the way I think and how I perceive things.” At her venue, The Keep, Sally runs artisan masterclasses and occasional dinners. As I write this the guest chef at the latest event is Nina Matsunaga of the Black Bull, Sedbergh, Cumbria, a huge favourite of mine (read my review).

Fact file

In Cork city we stayed in two hotels – The Montenotte Hotel, Middle Glanmire Road, Montenotte, Cork, T23 E9DX, Ireland. +353 21 453 0050.and The River Lee Hotel, Western Road, The Lough, Cork, T12 X2AH, Ireland. +353 21 425 2700.

Whole Catch (Blasta Books, 17 euros plus postage) is available from the Goldie website.

1 June 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Travel

My memories of melancholy old Youghal? Like Raleigh & Co we had a whale of a time

The great short story writer William Trevor knew all about exile. His was self-imposed. For the last half century of his life (he died in 2016) he lived in Devon, but his fictional focus stayed firmly on his native Ireland.

In 1969 he published a story called Memories of Youghal. It is set in the South of France resort of Bandol, but harks back to a very different southern port, in County Cork, when a drunken, disheveled stranger intrudes on the annual holiday of two loveless old maids – typical Trevor protagonists.

Miss Grimshaw returns to their hotel from a walk on the beach to find her deckchair usurped by one Quillan, a detective apparently, who has upset her companion Miss Ticher by detailing his tragic childhood in Youghal where he was orphaned by the sea at five months old and sorely neglected thereafter. Whiskey-fuelled, the encounter brings to the surface long-suppressed frustrations.

In contrast, the author had spent the happiest years of his childhood in Youghal (pronounced yawl), where his father was a bank manager. We spent the happiest days of our off-season County Cork sojourn in the town, pre-pandemic. Cork city, which we flew into with Aer Lingus, had proved rather dispiriting, while Youghal was an unexpected revelation. Ireland’s Blue Book had arranged for us to stay at sophisticated Hayfield Manor in Cork and laid-back Longueville House to the North. An interlude in Youghal had seemed like a makeweight despite the seafood reputation of our base there, Aherne’s Townhouse. How mistaken we were. Its true Irishness is preferable to gussied up gastro hub Kinsale the other side of Cork city.

From Walter Raleigh to Oliver Cromwell, from Moby Dick to the legendary lady who danced with Richard III before Bosworth Field the town was full of surprises.

With a melancholy undertow, though. Youghal had clearly seen more prosperous times. Yet we revelled in feeling we were characters in some William Trevor work. Take Treacy’s Bar. A sly afternoon Guinness felt in order after a busy morning exploring the town’s rich heritage. So we ensconced ourselves in in the snug off Main Street. The pub’s live music space has been dubbed the ‘Ballroom of the Romance’. An inadvertent echo of Trevor’s story of that name, turned into a TV film 40 years ago? Another dissection of blighted hopes, it was based on an actual ballroom he stumbled on in Leitrim.

At lunchtime Treacy’s was beyond cosy, but surely they could open the curtains to let the soft coastal light in? “Oh, it’s out of respect for a funeral cortege from St Mary’s that’ll be passing by shortly. One of our regulars, a lovely fellow, taken from us too soon.”

We toasted your man with the dark stuff and pondered the oddness of this town being home to two churches, both St Mary’s, less than 400 yards apart. One is the Catholic Parish Church hosting the day’s funeral, the other the 13th century St Mary’s Collegiate Church, claimed to be the oldest place of continuous worship in Ireland. Church of Ireland, bastion of English Protestant rule, it sits cheek by jowl with the Warden’s House (privately owned and known as Myrtle Grove), once home to Sir Walter Raleigh when he was Town Mayor.

In truth he only lived here intermittently during his 17 years in Ireland as a landlord benefiting immensely from the seizure or rebel lands. But Myrtle Grove (above) has strong claims to be the setting for the story that his servant doused Raleigh with a bucket of water after seeing clouds of smoke coming from his tobacco pipe, believing he had been set alight.

The prosperous English settlers built their grand houses inside Youghal’s medieval walls. Today, well preserved, they still afford magnificent views across the wide Blackwater Estuary.

And to think we’d only come to Youghal on a late detour, for the fish. Specifically to Ahernes Townhouse, which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year. It styles itself as ‘Seafood Restaurant and Accommodation’, which is probably the correct emphasis. The rooms tucked away in a courtyard off Main Street are boutique homely, but it is the locally landed seafood that really sings, treated unfussily and served with a rare warmth by the Fitzgibbon family in both the dining room and the bar.

I’d suggest you share the Hot Seafood Selection, featuring salmon, cod, monkfish, hake and brill in a chive sauce alongside prawns, oysters and mussels cooked with wine, garlic and olive oil. To partner this feast order a Hugel Riesling from Alsace from a wine list full of bargains. Of course, a Guinness and a dozen native oysters might suffice.

David Fitzgibbon kindly arranged tours of both the Clock Tower and the Collegiate Church for the next morning. The first transported us vividly from the site’s 14th century origins as a Walled Town fort, later separating the English incomers from the poorer native ‘Irishtown’, through its rebuilding as a grim gaol in 1777 on to the 20th century occupants of its draughty storeys. Beautifully recounted social history from a volunteer storyteller. Many thanks to Aisling O’Leary for my main townscape image, centred on the Clock Tower.

We made two private trips around the Collegiate Church, there was so much to explore. We loved the monument to Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, who died in Youghal in 1643. Two wives, his mother and nine of his 15 children join him in an astonishing ensemble, which cost over £500, a fortune in those days.

Without the fame of Raleigh whose estate he bought for a comparative song, the eventual Earl of Cork and Lord Treasurer of Ireland certainly cut the mustard as a self-made Jacobean adventurer/entrepreneur.

The only property Raleigh retained in Ireland was nearby Inchiquin Castle (today a ruin), let for life from the Dowager Countess of Desmond. Legend has it she died in 1604, aged 140 (having regrown a full set of teeth), after a fall from a cherry tree. Ireland’s full of tall tales. As a girl she was supposed to have danced with Richard III before his death at the battle of Bosworth. You do the sums.

Turbulent history continued to dog Youghal and its church. A few years later Oliver Cromwell wintered his troops in this strategic port, more important than Cork’s, en route to quell a rebellion. He is said to have preached a funeral oration to one of his officers standing on a trunk, still there in the Collegiate sanctuary.

This is only scratching the surface of the church’s riches and the rest of the walled town offers almshouses, merchant’s mansions and plenty more. Even the many empty shops are housed in rather grand buildings, proof of Youghal’s commercial heyday, now long past.

Surprises abound. Stray the other side of the Clock Tower Gate – Main Street passes through it – and you’ll eventually come to the vast sandy beach that made Youghal a popular seaside resort, reached from Cork City by train. Until the trains stopped in 1982.

My wife’s mother, whose father worked for the railways and so got free travel, often came here as a girl on a Sunday jaunt and never once stepped into the Walled Town.

For sentimental reasons we strolled hand-in-hand across the bracing strand, lamenting that we couldn’t be there for the annual ‘Queen Of The Sea’, a beauty pageant that also features a crab catching competition.

That now seems to have been a casualty of the pandemic, while the Youghal Potato Festival – a homage to the myth of Raleigh planting Ireland’s first spud crop here – bit the dust years ago. Still the The Moby Dick Festival is planning to go ahead this summer, covid protocols permitting. Expect a parade, a bonny baby competition and other blubberly treats.

Youghal famously stood in for New Bedford, Massachusetts when John Huston filmed his 1954 version of Herman Melville’s novel, starring Gregory Peck as Cap’n Ahab out for revenge on the whale that took his leg off. Huston got legless on occasion in Paddy Linehan’s pub, his quayside HQ. In his honour, Paddy later renamed it Moby Dicks and added a gallery of movie stills. Outside there’s a statue of Ahab and his harpoon that the Blackwater gulls show scant respect for.

8 February 2022/by Neil Sowerby

Food

Ta-ta taties! But is celeriac in colcannon complete sacrilege?

I ought to be reassured by Richard Corrigan writing “there’s no such thing as a recipe for colcannon really,” but all he’s doing in The Clatter of Forks and Spoons is dismissing the need for exact measurements or debating whether you can substitute kale for Savoy cabbage. The great chef is not jettisoning the spuds, bedrock of this rustic Irish classic.

Both colcannon and its country cousin champ can be made using fresh or leftover potatoes, but they have to be the floury sort, boiled in their skins. The texture is all wrong with waxy varieties. Parsnips can be added but mustn’t be a puree.

*My ‘Colcannon Royale’ with celeriac and pancetta gilding the cabbage lily*

The champ mash variant is proof, though that dishes mutate with the times. Originally it was made with stinging nettles – peasant stuff indeed – but over the years spring onions, green and white parts, became the norm. The word colcannon is from the Gaelic term cal ceannann, which means white-headed cabbage while cainnenin can mean garlic, onion, or leek.

But does all this looseness give me carte blanche to make colcannon with mashed celeriac, albeit kept deliberately lumpy? After all, the Scots equivalent of an avenue for leftover mashed potatoes, rumbledethumps, can easily incorporate swede or turnip, while England’s own bubble and squeak has licence to use up a whole gallimaufry of fridge remnants.

In this company, celeriac is a class apart, especially when the mash (never a puree) is augmented with cream and butter, then stirred into lacy Savoy and young leek, braised but retaining a certain bite. Oh and I couldn’t resist adding crisp pancetta to the mix. I call it my Colcannon Royale.

*My combination of traditional coq au vin and colcannon was wickedly delicious*

It would have made a fine bowlful on its own, but I partnered it with an old school coq au vin, which made for a testingly rich lunch. Before I had a much-needed lie-down I continued some cursory research into the role of colcannon in Irish life and its curious association with Halloween.

Indeed the first written mention was a 1735 diary entry of one William Bulkely, a traveller from Wales who had the dish on October 31 in Dublin: “Dined at Cos. Wm. Parry, and also supped there upon a shoulder of mutton roasted and what they call there Coel Callen, which is cabbage boiled, potatoes and parsnips, all this mixed together. They eat well enough, and is a dish always had in this kingdom on this night.”

Bulkely didn’t know the half of it. For Halloween the Celts developed their own souped up fortune telling equivalent of coins in Christmas pud. It all kicked off with a blindfolded spinster plucking from the garden the head of cabbage or kale that is to be cooked in the colcannon.

Charms were mixed into the dish itself. Which charm you found was seen as a portent for the future. A button meant you would remain a bachelor and a thimble meant you would remain a spinster for the coming year. A ring meant you would get married and a coin meant you would come into wealth.

To seal the deal unmarried women would stick the first and last spoonfuls of Halloween colcannon into a stocking and hang it on their doors. Guaranteeing the first man who walked through the door would become their husband.

There’s even a 19th century folk song, ‘The Skillet Pot’ that celebrates the dish:

“Did you ever eat colcannon when ’twas made with yellow cream,
And the kale and praties blended like the picture in a dream?
Did you ever take a forkful, and dip it in the lake
Of the heather-flavoured butter that your mother used to make?”

Time to consult Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion To Food, one of the greatest books in the English language. An immediate surprise in the colcannon entry is its adoption by the English upper classes in the late 18th century. According to one account: “A more elaborate mash was prepared of potatoes and Brussels sprouts, highly flavoured with ginger and moistened with generous amounts of milk and butter.” Now that is a ‘Royale rival’.

*Caldo Verde is a distant Portuguese relative of colcannon and all the other cabbage/potato combos*

Still for those lower down the social ranks it is so often a leftover dish. And I’ve still got three quarters of a Savoy cabbage and half a bag of Rooster potatoes. Onions, garlic and chorizo are yanked from the larder, chicken stock from the freezer and soon, small world, a big pot of Portuguese Caldo Verde is simmering on the hob. Shall we call it Sopa de Colcannon’?

12 September 2021/by Neil Sowerby

Tag Archive for: Ireland