The Darina Allen Column

I’m sitting with my back to a stone wall on Inis Meáin – on Ireland’s western seaboard – watching islander Padraic McDonagh hand threshing rye in the time honoured way. He chooses a flat lime stone area and then he makes a little circle of sheaves to catch the seed.

He grasps a sheaf and bashes it against a flat stone which he has propped at a perfect angle. When all the seed is threshed out he carefully collects every grain to replant for his next years crop of rye. The precious straw will be used to thatch his sheds and outbuildings. I feel hugely fortunate to come upon this gentle islander threshing his rye in a way that may date back thousands of years. It makes me wish I’d come to Inis Meáin thirty years ago.

Each of the Aran islands is truly unique and offers a different experience. Understandably island life has changed dramatically in the last few decades; nonetheless it was quite a shock and a delight to discover that many of the older inhabitants of Inis Meáin – the least visited of the Aran Islands – have little or no English.

All the native islanders speak a beautiful lilting Irish quite unlike the ‘civil service’ Irish I learned in National School. Not being a native speaker I connected the island with Inis Meáin knitwear, of which I’ve been an avid admirer for many years, and even more with the writings of John Milligan Synge.

However I was eventually lured to the island by glowing descriptions of Ruairí and Marie Thérèse de Blacam’s little restaurant with accommodation rather incongruously named Inis Meáin Restaurant & Suites.

So how does one get there? There are regular ferries from Rossaveel and Doolin. Guests are met by the grey Inis Meáin ‘shuttle’ and transported way up the hill from the new harbour past an occasional white washed and sometimes thatched cottage and past the little meadows each surrounded by stark and beautiful dry stone walls.

There were a few cattle here and there, a profusion of wild flowers, brambles and sloes and occasional potato ridges full of floury spuds that have been grown in a mixture of sand and seaweed. Red seaweed, kelp and black sea bladder wrack each delivers its own minerals. The islanders have collected seaweed on Caladh Mór and around the island since time immemorial and have gradually built up the soil on the solid rock face of Inis Meáin.

Ruairí de Blacam was reared on the island but educated in Blackrock College. His mother Áine was and still is the school teacher on the island. During his gap year he went to work in an Irish pub in Germany and soon realised that cooking and playing music were a lot more appealing than college. He did a month long apprenticeship with John Desmond on Heir Island off Baltimore; Johnny, a brilliant chef and teacher, kindled his passion for beautiful fresh local produce, simply cooked.

Back in Dublin, Ruairí pestered Johnny Cook until he took him into his kitchen. The message was further reinforced there and on ‘stages’ in Italy, Austria and Paris. Friends urged him to open a restaurant in Dublin but he longed to return to his native Inis Meáin to open a B&B and a restaurant, a brave brave step but Ruairí knew as did his father before him that people will make a detour for quality – Inis Meáin knitwear is sold in the swankiest shops in London, New York and Tokyo...

The low slung stone building tucked into the landscape was designed in conjunction with his uncle’s firm de Blacam and Meagher. There are just four suites and one suite apartment, each with a twenty foot long window with superb views across the island, across the Twelve Pins in Connemara and Black Head.

When dinner starts with a little bowl of warm periwinkles – picked off the rocks just below the restaurant at Caladh Mór, you know you’re on the right track. The short menu illustrates the brilliance of keeping it simple. We had three delicious dinners there, gorgeous crab salads, one with mango salsa and another with celeriac remoulade and roast peppers. The juicy T bone steak came from their animals reared on the island. Ruairí served it with tiny roast carrots and parsnips and a big bowl of floury spuds again grown by Ruairí under the guidance of his maternal uncle.

Lobster, like the crab, are caught in pots by the island currach fishermen. Scallops are from the Inis Meáin bank less than a mile from the island’s coast, and spanking fresh hake is fished by local trawlers. For pudding, gorgeous crème brulee, crumbles and tarts made with apples from a local orchard. Ruairí also served crúibíní that he had picked which I think must be wild redcurrants close to the small – no one knew the English name. Deceptively simple and delicious food.

Ruairí and his wife Marie Thérèse (who hails from Midleton) are determined to produce as much of their own produce as possible. They acquired a couple of traditional breed, saddleback pigs last year so there could be succulent home produced pork on the menu.

After dinner we wandered up to Teach Ósta Inis Meáin pub to chat and listen to the locals speaking beautiful Irish. There are no night clubs or discos, no hurdy gurdies or juke boxes and no chicken nuggets but there is Teach Synge where the playwright stayed on the island, Dun Chonchúir (Connor’s Fort) and breathtakingly beautiful walks and timeless landscape with many prehistoric monuments – makes for a relaxing and refreshing break as Ruairí and Marie Thérèse wish for you. Booking is essential so plan ahead – well worth the detour.

In the morning a breakfast tray loaded with goodies arrives in your room – warm smoked mackerel, boiled eggs, good natural yogurt, home made muesli and fresh berries, freshly baked and still warm scones and soda bread, homemade marmalade and jams and maybe a slice of craftily cut pineapple – there’s plenty for a picnic later.

The fridge and cupboards in the bedrooms are stuffed with tempting goodies, a far cry from the usual mini-bar offering, Green and Black dark organic chocolate, Ortiz tuna, Farmhouse cheese, Gubbeen chorizo, Carr’s water biscuits, good wine and Irish apple juice.

Everything has been carefully selected and thought through. There’s lots to do on the island. Two mountain bikes sit outside the suite and a couple of fishing rods are ready and baited for those who would like to catch a few mackerel to cook for supper.


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Once again this year, the Ballymaloe Cookery School in East Cork has a great program of cookery courses for all interests and abilities. Ranging from a relaxing visit to sit in on an afternoon cookery demonstration to a week long ‘Intensive Introductory Course’.

Sitting in the middle of a 100 acre organic farm the Ballymaloe Cookery School provides its students not only with a life skill learnt under the expert tutelage of their very capable teachers but also a place to relax and unwind from the stresses and strains of normal everyday life. The cottage accommodation available onsite consists of a collection of delightful converted outbuildings which have been transformed over the years by the Allens.

www.cookingisfun.ie