“You get this feeling when you enter the Burren’s limestone landscape,” says Aoibheann MacNamara of the moonlike karst in County Clare. “It has an energy, and a history that permeates.” A dynamic entrepreneur, MacNamara champions slow food at her Galway restaurant, Ard Bia, and slow fashion through her homespun label, The Tweed Project. I’ve made my way through those starkly serene karst fields to her most recent undertaking, Summerage, a reimagined farmhouse set on 32 acres that’s the ideal place to reflect on the region’s timeless appeal. The Scandi-minimalist interiors and deliberate lack of Wi-Fi mean a stay here is all about reading, picking blackberries, or staring out the window at the shaggy-maned ponies, Crunchy and Holly.
In recent years here in western Ireland, a clutch of openings in counties from Clare to Mayo have become incubators for a modern take on the term “slow travel”—from village pubs turned design-led retreats to pop-up feasts on organic farms. It’s why I’m zigzagging along the Atlantic coast to speak to the people who are putting a twist on the region’s age-old way of life and reviving dying traditions.
I drive inland and northeast to the more leafy setting of Bullaun in County Galway to find Danny Africano. Working toward self-sustainability at his restaurant, Lignum, the 30-something chef preserves the glut of what’s grown in the kitchen garden for the winter months. Arriving for lunch here on a balmy Sunday, I pass the bountiful veggie patch before entering the restaurant, where a dimly lit preservation room is filled with neatly labeled jars of pickles and preserves. Artfully plated courses appear from the sizzle and smoke of the open kitchen: local mussels set in their shell, foam-topped fire-licked pork.
