An eight-year-old brought me my breakfast menu after her mom took my order for a flat white and fry, offering fruit juice, inclusive of my B&B rate. Teeming with contemporary ambiance, The Ivy would be common place in a bigger city. That's what makes it exceptional in Clifden's winter landscape. With frost on the ground, snow on the mountain peaks and a good chance of seeing your own breath, a monochrome modern interior buzz can be as warming as a hearth. One gets the sense to read the day's news or poetry at The Ivy, to awaken to the current date and time.
In from Essex, the family running the unique compound in the centre of Clifden since late last year has renovated the rooms, the menu, and the wine selection. With rates from €75 this winter, there's reason to wake up in Clifden.
Images by: Heather Richie.
The "capital of Connemara" is, for some, yesterday's playground. Many of us still find it culturally refreshing in the West, if not a forgotten getaway by residents as near as Mayo. (That's how a hotel manager in Westport described it to me in conversation last year, "Right. Clifden. We forget about it.") It's not unlike a fishing spot one would rather not reveal, but to be sensible:
I've been meaning to get to the rooms at the former Lamplight, now the Ivy, for some time now. I'm glad my visit comes under the new management, for a fresh start. I've stayed and dined just about everywhere Clifden has to offer. Bear in mind this is a small place, so that nuanced details unfold easily, like the wonderful family who manages at The Woodfield doesn't own the building, so there's no sense in faulting them for the lackluster rooms; or The Abbeyglen Castle Hotel was never a castle but rather a period house for which the original owner, now with his son, thought to adorn with spires and call a castle for marketing purposes. Peel a few more layers off the onion and you'll learn one restaurant premises is leased and operated by a man who owns another premises in town and rents the latter to another restaurant team. The town is quintessentially mercantile in character. No hospitality group in town owns more than a few properties. Among such small places, it's population of quality boutiques is unparalleled. If Norman Rockwell painted Ireland, he'd have painted Clifden.
I frequented the traditional Irish B&B, The Ben View House, in my earliest days in Clifden. Not unlike a visit to your grandmother's, this wonderfully old-fashioned guesthouse is the kind of Irish culturally traditional stay that would never disappear if I could help it. Like rural Irish post offices or turf fires, they are, however, with the threat of extinction, in the case of the younger generations flocking to the cities for work. While The Ivy offers the foil aesthetic, its heart is the same with the family hospitality and refreshing quality of ingredients so that The Ivy Fry can break feee a bit from the confines of the Full Irish, with herb infused sausages and potatoes and notably absent of pudding.
You will walk right by The Ivy without knowing. Facing the street, it appears to be a slither of a wine bar. You have to go down its alleyway to find an ample courtyard, protected from the elements, and further back, a full bar and eatery of continental vibe. This is handed down from what's become three owner operators of the unique space. The square footage is maximized. A narrow stairwell above the bar leads to the small cluster of rooms, outfitted with Edison light bulbs, eastern-style light fixtures, faux alligator skinned and similar textured wall paper, and mood.
The Alcock & Brown Hotel, which is a second home to me and which renovated its rooms last winter, is the only other small hotel in town with wholly modern rooms. Irish hospitality is walking a tight rope, pricing itself out of market last season; losing identity in response to world events and globalism while not always updating a kitsch Ireland to North American visitors who would welcome an evolved offering if they knew how to ask for it. Ireland wins foremost at owner operator hospitality, but The Ivy demonstrates its universality. Save that, there is nothing essentially Irish about The Ivy, but that's what's refreshing about it in the western outpost.
You can book your stay on the theivy-clifden.com.
Heather Richie is Wade & Wallow's digital editor and has also written for Oxford American, Fly Fisherman, Sporting Classics, and Garden & Gun. A graduate of College of Charleston and Sewanee: The University of the South, her MFA thesis FULL: A Slim Volume on Southern Foodways was accepted for publication by Louisiana State University Press.
