The Waters Country House

In the rural heart of The Burren, with views out towards the Cliffs of Moher, you’ll find this well-frequented restaurant with a clean, modern interior. The menu offers an appealing choice of dishes crafted using top-notch produce, which is treated with care and skill by the kitchen team. A few ambitious, adventurous flavour combinations might appear too, like mango with salmon. The friendly service and simply furnished bedrooms complete a rather charming picture.

On the first floor of the personally run The Twelve Hotel, named after the nearby Twelve Bens mountain peaks, Blackthorn is a bright, airy spot with a Nordic influence. The dining room provides the ideal backdrop to a menu focused on grilling seasonal ingredients over charcoal, filling the air with wonderful smoky aromas. Whether it’s lamb with herb salsa, pheasant with cavolo nero or whole black sole with brown butter and capers, the ingredients are given a lick of fire in generous, carefully executed dishes.

This long-standing, rustically charming restaurant is really two places in one. At lunch, they take walk-ins only and serve one course followed by homemade cakes and pastries (they also have their own bakery). Things ramp up a gear at dinner, with a three-course à la carte heavily guided by the seasons and the local area. Dishes are often understated in appearance, with just a handful of ingredients needed for plentiful flavour. The concise wine list pushes lesser-known producers to the fore and features on-trend natural and orange wines.