Why Seafood-Lovers Will Travel to the Ends of the Earth for Irish Oysters

"We’re at the ends of the earth,” says Hugh O’Malley. I’ve pulled in at a service station along Clew Bay, to make a phone call requesting the final directions to Achill Oysters. Carry on, Hugh tells me — along the misty twisting roads and turf-coloured hills of the Corraun Peninsula, crossing the bridge to Achill Island, threading the car down a needle of a boreen lane until… well, until it runs out. “If you see a sign saying, ‘Here be dragons’,” the founder of Achill Oysters jests. “Go beyond that!”

This beautifully desolate bay, where the dark rows of his oyster farm’s trestles — bridge-like structures used for intertidal shellfish farming — line up in seas frothing over an ancient, sunken peat bog, could pass for such a place. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a dragon rear up above the corrie lakes here in County Mayo — a central stop along Ireland’s aptly named Wild Atlantic Way. The country’s longest defined coastal touring route spans 1,600 miles along the western seaboard and, on the mid-point of this windblown road, County Mayo and neighbouring Galway are jewelled with some of the world’s best oysters.

Finding Achill at the ends of the earth, some minutes later, it’s not long before I’m suiting up in waders and oilskins. I join a group that Hugh leads onto the squelchy sands towards a web of trestles, where we pick our way through a series of tough mesh sacks. Inside, we find thousands of gnarly rock oysters, each of which can filter around 10 litres of water an hour.

Hugh opens a bag and starts shucking. A silky shell soon sits in my palm, cradling a quivering gloop. I tip it into my mouth to be met with a creamy, straight-from-the-ocean sensation that surprises me with its sweetness and mineral notes.

The ocean, the weather, turning the sacks — oyster farming is hard work. “Guys who go to the gym wouldn’t last a tide here,” muses Hugh. We’ve been out an hour or so, and the wind feels like it would skin a dogfish.

Pip Lacey, former executive chef at London’s Guinness Open Gate Brewery, is among the group of visitors. She’s taken with the “brutality” of the situation — the science, the struggle with the elements and the simple, squishy mouthful that results. “I find these oysters very deep, very umami,” she says. “The creaminess, the meatiness of it — without being too weird — in your mouth, if you know what I mean.” “It’s very, very real,” says Hugh.

From Shell Middens to Michelin Stars

You’ll find oysters on menus all over Ireland. North along the coast, at the Mulranny Park Hotel, I’d previously sampled them with a chilli and lime dressing. Meanwhile, in Galway’s Kai, where chef Jess Murphy penned a seafood-forward cookbook titled A Love Letter to the West of Ireland, they were served with a tart mignonette made with tayberries rather than the traditional shallots. At Kai, dishes like local crab and curried scallops feel like more than just menu options; they’re links to landscape. But travelling to the source like this opens my eyes.

Mayo and Galway are western counties that wear history and harsh winters on their sleeves. On Achill Island I stop at Keem Bay, where basking sharks can be spotted in summer, and pass Slievemore, a deserted booley (transhumance) village. The tumbledown stone huts were last used in the early 20th century but date back 5,000 years as a seasonal settlement for farmers. Kite-surfers flicker like exotic birds in the skies nearby. Later, over on the mainland in Connemara, Kylemore Abbey is reflected in its lake, and roadsides spurt gorse and montbretia. As I drive, the sun moves like a searchlight across the peaks of the Twelve Bens.

The food along this cut of coast feels like it’s gone up a gear in recent years. From Michelin-starred restaurants like Galway’s Aniar to gastropubs like Cronin’s Sheebeen outside Westport, chefs and restaurateurs are re-engaging with local landscape and ingredients. They seem reinvigorated.

“You’re eating the land of Connemara,” owner Dean Gibson once told me at the Connemara Sands Hotel, as I scoffed scoops of Jimmy’s ice cream flavoured with local honey and using carrageen seaweed as a binding agent. This time, when I return to eat at its friendly restaurant by Mannin Bay for lunch, there’s a map of nearby producers on the menu and more deceptively casual cooking, which lets local ingredients sing — lobster pie, slow-braised lamb shoulder, DK Connemara oysters glistening in their shells with a simple shallot vinaigrette and olive oil.

Some 70 miles south, I’m soon back in waders, being led by Diarmuid Kelly, joint owner of Kelly Oysters. “You’ve heard of terroir,” says Diarmuid. “We’re calling it
merroir.” I can’t see any mermaids in the water here at Galway Bay, but this is certainly a charmed seascape. Brandishing pitchforks, our small group of visitors follows Diarmuid out for a harvesting tour of his family’s oyster farm, making our way from a small stone pier down onto a shoreline squirming with hidden sea life.

Among the group today are visiting chefs and restaurateurs looking to connect with small Irish producers, including Robin Hancock, co-founder and director of venerable UK seafood suppliers and restaurant group Wright Brothers. Robin is taken with how these modern oyster farmers are wading back into tradition — bringing modern methods and science, but battling the same timeless, ruthless elements: “Brave men like Diarmuid, who are just like: ‘Let’s grow oysters’.”

The farm here’s a little closer to civilisation than Achill, with Clarenbridge (famous for a September oyster festival) just a short drive from Galway. Yet it feels pristine. “You’re walking on life,” Diarmuid says, before holding up a rock oyster. “That’s the shape you’re looking for: a teardrop.”

Red-beaked oystercatchers rummage in pools as he combs about, picking up periwinkles and pepper dulse. “Crunch that up in your fingers, smell it and taste it,” he says, handing me a sprig of the seaweed. “It’s like truffles.”

The group stoops over his palm like seabirds. They huddle, sniffing and tasting, wondering if it could feature in a dish… butter, mayo, maybe a garnish? All sound mouth-watering to me.

The Star of the Show

Oysters here weren’t always considered delicacies. People were shucking them here thousands of years ago, chucking them into shell middens you can still see today (there’s a sandy bank loaded with shells at Culleenamore in County Sligo). Previous generations knew them as ‘poor man’s food’, Diarmuid tells me — a basic staple fished from wooden currach rowing boats and brought home in buckets.

More recently, native stocks were overfished, and aquaculture businesses like Kelly’s and Achill Oysters mostly farm Pacific rock oysters. But you can still find natives — flatter, rounder, sweeter, richer — hidden in the sand and on menus with a premium attached. The rule that oysters can only be found during months with the letter ‘R’ (September to April) comes from natives reproducing during summer, and not being eaten at this time — when, at any rate, they taste more acidic. Irish rock oysters can be enjoyed year-round.

On the pier at Kelly’s, we tuck into natives and rock oysters, experimenting with squirts of lemon, shallot vinegar, gin and Tabasco, and even a spray from a diffuser of whiskey. “It brings out the peatiness,” Diarmuid says.

His oysters ship to locations as diverse as Dubai and Dromoland Castle in County Clare, though my next stop is closer. Directly across the waters of the nearby Kilcolgan estuary, Moran’s Oyster Cottage is a restaurant grown over several generations from a thatched riverside cottage. And seafood is the star of the show. ‘But first, Kelly’s oysters!’ is the line at the top of the menu, which offers natives, rock, grilled and thermidor options.

Opposite the bar, I spot a handwritten poem by late Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. It describes a plate of oysters enjoyed in ‘the cool of thatch and crockery’ of Moran’s and offers a melodic meditation on simple pleasures, on privilege and political conflict. I linger on the line ‘My tongue was a filling estuary / My palate hung with starlight’.

Heaney was a regular visitor to this part of the world. “We thought he was just an ordinary farmer,” says William Moran, son of Willie to whom the poem is dedicated. But one day they saw his photo in the paper with a Nobel Prize. “Seamus, you never told me you were a poet!” said William’s dad. “You never asked,” was the reply.

Outside, the weir washes on. My own journey takes me further south along the Wild Atlantic Way, past landmarks that rejoice in such names as Flaggy Shore, to my room for the night at The Armada. Here, in this coastal hotel in County Clare, I read a menu under the moody lighting of a modern brasserie and cocktail bar. I choose oysters ‘handpicked from the Atlantic shoreline by Hugh O’Malley and his team’ and they arrive on ice, in a shallow stoneware dish. All the way from the ends of the earth.