2017 Award Winners NATURAL FOOD AWARD 2017

Burren Glamping, Burren Free Range Pork Farm, Kilfenora, Co Clare

The Guide has always championed the best of Irish produce. It’s the philosophy behind our food recommendations and the Natural Food Award has emphasised this for many years, by celebrating particular establishments that create a meeting point between the best and freshest local produce and the consumer. The original aim was to recognise specifically “an individual or team, driven by a total commitment to using the very best of fresh, seasonal and mainly local foods – and preparing them simply and with style, to showcase their natural goodness and the quality produce of the locality”. It now also includes food products, producers and retailers as well, along the lines of our entries in Ireland for Food Lovers, which remains Ireland’s only regional food tourism guide.

This place and its diverse products are an extraordinarily evocative expression of a philosophy that takes in food, hospitality and landscape.

Already well known for their wonderful free range pork, in 2015 Eva Hegarty and her husband Stephen (a Burren guide) embarked on a new enterprise, Burren Glamping (burrenglamping.com), and they now offer cosy accommodation in an imaginatively converted vintage horse truck on this small farm. But, although the facilities in the horse truck are excellent, it’s not just a self catering arrangement.

Eva is also happy to cook for her glampers, and her meals often feature the pork produced by the happy, naturally fed Burren pigs - Saddlebacks and Saddleback/Tamworth cross - that Eva also sells at local markets (Ennis & Ennistymon). Look out for it on menus, and you can buy from the farm (by appointment).

Quirky and simply gorgeous, Burren Glamping is a total one-off and simply has to be seen to be believed. - it's open all year too, and so well insulated that you'll be warmer here than in many a B&B.