Michelin Dining on the Wild Atlantic Way: Aniar and Chestnut

Eat the west of Ireland at two Michelin-starred tables where the day's harvest from shore, farm and hedgerow writes the menu.

Two Kitchens, One Idea

In the West End of Galway, on Lower Dominick Street, Aniar is a small, unfussy room of wood and stone. Dinner runs to 24 courses, each built from whatever the west’s farms, wild land, shore and sea gave up that week. A fresh menu is drawn up each morning, so no two nights are the same.

Chestnut sits in Ballydehob, a west Cork village of under 300 people, 40 minutes from Skibbereen, where Rob Krawczyk has kept a Michelin star since 2019. His eight-course tasting menu draws its fish, meat, vegetables and herbs from the countryside around the village, and it’s the time of year, not a printed card, that decides what reaches the plate. Both kitchens share the same belief: the landscape is the menu, and what’s available today becomes tonight’s dinner.

Shore, Farm and Hedgerow

Ireland’s west coast produces some of Europe’s best seafood. The ocean off this coast runs cold, pure and full of life, and its shellfish, wild fish and seaweed taste unlike anything from gentler, heavily farmed seas. Oysters from Galway Bay, grown here for centuries, are served raw and undressed at Aniar to let the ingredient speak, and the same bay yields clams, mussels, crab and lobster in season.

Inland, the mild, wet climate nurtures wild plants, herbs and fungi most European kitchens can’t get, and the chefs know the farms that supply them personally, most within a short drive. Through the year, both kitchens cook with foraged mushrooms, wild garlic, wood sorrel, pennywort, rock samphire and sea purslane, plus the crops of a few nearby growers whose harvest shapes the menu rather than following it. At Aniar, Chef Patron JP McMahon champions traditional cooking and preserving, so you’ll taste smoked, cured, fermented and pickled things throughout, while Chestnut works hand in hand with west Cork producers, foragers and fishermen.

Plan Ahead, Then Take Your Time

Both restaurants are small and always in demand. Aniar seats around 30, Chestnut is similarly intimate, and in high season both book up weeks ahead, so a reservation is essential. These are long evenings: Aniar’s 24 courses take three to four hours and Chestnut’s eight take about as long, so treat dinner as the day’s main event. It’s the kind of night a food-loving couple plans a trip around.

The pairings are worth it. At Aniar you can choose classic wines or the house’s own non-alcoholic juice flight, while Chestnut pours mostly natural and biodynamic bottles from small winemakers that match its foraged, seasonal cooking.

At the Table

At Aniar, the 24 courses start with the lightest ingredients, build toward richer dishes and return to the land for dessert, where blackcurrant leaf, meadowsweet and sea buckthorn often make an appearance. Staff explain each course in enough detail to understand where it came from and how it was made, without the explanation overshadowing the food.

Chestnut’s eight courses are more generous, with its west Cork identity clearest in the fish and shellfish, where the Atlantic is right there on the plate. Set in a former pub, the room has an ease the quality of the cooking never undermines. Book months ahead and you still won’t know what you’ll eat at either, and that’s exactly the point. Your Out Of Office LGBTQ+ travel specialist can secure the tables and plan a Wild Atlantic Way drive between them, with welcoming places to stay.