Life

Eating Out: McGarrigle's of Bundoran a friendly place with bags of potential

The seaside town of Bundoran, Co Donegal, is well known to many northern holidaymakers and has some great restaurants if you know where to look
The seaside town of Bundoran, Co Donegal, is well known to many northern holidaymakers and has some great restaurants if you know where to look The seaside town of Bundoran, Co Donegal, is well known to many northern holidaymakers and has some great restaurants if you know where to look

McGarrigles Bar and Restaurant

Bundoran

Co Donegal

00353 (0) 71 9842060

IF YOU'VE never been to Bundoran, or Fundoran as my children used to call it, can you really call yourself Irish? The seaside town, with its bars, burger places and 10p slots is what holidays of old were made of, but it's also much more than that, with the Wild Atlantic Way walk and breathtaking scenery.

While watching death-defying surfers take on waves in water so cold it gave me brain freeze just looking at it, I felt a rush of nostalgia for the area. My mum had a caravan in Bundoran and when my children were small they spent much of their summer there. We have the pictures and memories to vouch for the fact that they were happy times.

My sister now owns a home close by and we often congregate around the open fire together in her country kitchen. My children, no longer children, still love the place.

Holiday spots such as Bundoran have suffered greatly, first by the glut of cheap foreign holidays that priced them out of the market and then later by the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. You would be forgiven for thinking curry chips are the most exotic thing on the menu in Bundoran but I can assure you there are some brilliant restaurants if you know where to look.

Family-owned McGarrigle's, in Bundoran's Main Street, featured in RTE's At Your Service programme in 2015 when it was given a makeover and a menu change in a bid to boost the business that was suffering badly due to the economic downturn. As a result it has a bit of a themed, pale blue, seaside vibe going on inside and out that I have to say I'm not so sure about.

We hadn't booked but got a table for three by the window in what was a fairly busy restaurant. The menu was extensive; I was happy to see it had a lot of fish on offer but also on the upper end of the price point you'd expect to pay in Bundoran.

We ordered a bottle of house white, which was a nice Pinot Grigio and had a good look. The fussy one refuses to eat fish so ordered some wings to start; I thought I'd try the calamari and there was also a goats cheese crostini dish for the third.

Of the three, the wings were the best in show; they were sticky and well cooked with a smokey barbecue taste. The calamari was decent and tasted fresh. It came with a salsa which had no place on the plate – it would have been better with a garlic aioli. The salsa was also in a plastic dish; someone really needs to do an Ikea run for a few ramekins.

The goats cheese was lovely, though, and beautifully presented.

A mixed bag. And so we moved on to mains with more fish for me in the form of a cod dish while the more adventurous friend went for a salmon and sea bass combo and there was a chicken supreme that came with a rich sauce and crispy onions.

The sides were great – lovely, floury mashed potato and veg that were perfectly al dente, lots of bite and seasoned as they should be. But my cod was full of bones. I'm not one to yap about bones because that's always a possibility when ordering fresh fish, but it could have been prepped better. It came with a beautiful zesty sauce and I ploughed on regardless, pulling out bones as I went.

The salmon was wonderfully moist and perfectly cooked but the sea bass appeared to have been cooked in a water bath so, while still juicy, needed thrown in a pan with some butter and oil to crispen the skin.

The fussy one ate all of her chicken dish and declared it perfect for her taste and who am I to argue with that?

The service in McGarrigles was really good – efficient and prompt but not overpowering. It's a great place with bags of potential and just a few wee snags that could be improved on to make it a spot worth travelling to Bundoran for.

THE BILL

Bottle pinot €17.95

Calamari €8.95

Wings €6.95

Goats cheese €6.95

Chicken €15.95

Cod €15.95

Salmon/seabass combo €22.95

Total €95.65 (£79.95)