The New York Times, March 16 1977

Living Abroad: Pearls of Erin by R. W. Apple Jr

Kilcolgan, Ireland - If you're willing to take the time to search and if you can resist the 'locals' determination to steer you into places where they would rather drape fishnets on the walls than cook, you can find, along most of the seacoasts of the world, honest houses with fresh fish and congenial company.

Galway Bay is like that. If you go into the big hotel in the town, you'll get a beautiful view of the bay, stretching away towards the Atlantic and North America, but you'll also get tough scallops in a plastic shell, covered with a glutinous cheese sauce, rimmed with library paste squeezed through a tube.

So don't go there. Turn off the main road from Shannon, as you head north up the verdant West Coast of Ireland, about 12 miles before you reach Galway, when you see the small sign advertising Moran's Oyster Cottage.

Moran's fishnets aren't much. But you'll find a real Irish cottage, 200 years old, with a real thatched roof and a real peat fire burning on the hearth, filling the tiny rooms with its special sweet aroma. You'll also find Martin Neylan, who is 19 years old, and his friend Willie Moran, 22, who is the sixth generation of his family to grow up in the harsh, blustery beauty of Kilcolgan.

It is a spot that ranks, in the memory of one exuberant eater with Sam's Grill in San Francisco, whose charcoal-grilled petrale instantly dispels any lingering temptation to return to Fisherman's Wharf, and with a joint on the beach in Nhamtrang, Vietnam, whose name is long since forgotten but whose lobsters are not, and with the Brasserie des Catalans on the corniche above Marseilles, whose bouillabaisse is the Platonic ideal of fish stew.

At Moran's, this is the menu. "Seafood Specialities: Galway Oysters, served with homemade brown bread, butter and Guinness/Smoked salmon/Mussel soup/Irish coffee." Serious students take some of each, though it is socially acceptable to rearrange the order of the first three items.

The oysters are quite simply the best that one fanatic - a man who has eaten Olympias in Seattle, Chincoteagues in Baltimore, Sydney Rock Oysters, Belons and Blue Points, Colchesters and Mobile Bays - ever put in his mouth. Fresh, plump, briny with none of that unappetisinhg greasiness that betrays the oyster that left its habitat forever two or three days earlier.

The oysters of Moran's usually reach the table within an hour of the time they are rated into baskets, and moments after Martin or Willie opens them. Which is something to watch.

The 21st Annual World Oyster Open Contest was held a few miles up the road in the village of Clarenbridge last September, and Martin came within a whisker of winning. He shucked 30 oysters in two minutes and 29 seconds, by far the best time, but he was penalised for having allowed bits of shell to fall into the oysters. The title went to Cornelius McKall from St. Mary's County, Md.

"'Our eye-sters," Martin Neylan explained in a rich accent that would pass unnoticed in South Boston, " come from our own beds. They're at the mouth of a little stream, where the water is two-thirds salt, one-third fresh. That's the ideal combination."

Less than two months ago, the house record at Moran's - pronounced MORE-ans, not mor-ANN'S - was shattered by a pair of visiting Englishmen. Hugh Williams and a friend (whose signature, perhaps understandably, is illegible in the guest book) consumed 158 of Galway Bay's best in one hour and 50 minutes.

Presumably they also had plenty of Mother Moran's brown bread, a dense and delicious loaf made with sour milk, and plenty of swarthy Guinness stout from the tap, with a creamy head in which Martin will sometimes write your name if you seem to enjoy the place.

The salmon is no less special, smoked rapidly for only five or six hours, rather than the usual 12 or more, and cut by hand. It is moist without being oily, more the colour of a peach than of the nova that New Yorkers dote upon. This is the land of the famine that depopulated Ireland 130 years ago, but one would never know it from the eight or ten slices that cover the plate from rim to rim.

One odd thing: For all its delicacy and subtlety of flavour, the salmon that you'll eat here smells like salmon.

Moran's isn't a cooking place, really. The mussel soup is a simple broth, given its savor by the freshness of the shellfish rather than elaborate seasonings and thickenings. Only in the summer, when you can sit on the terrace out the front and watch the punters and fishermen at their work, does Mrs. Moran trouble herself with anything complicated - a salmon salad, made from freshly poached local fish. Willie says it's unbeatable.

The prices? Gluttony isn't costly in Western Ireland. Moran's charges $3 a dozen for oysters, $2.75 for a plate of smoked salmon.

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The New York Times, 26 August 1984

What's Doing in Galway: Food and Drink
by Sean O'Rourke,

In the mid-19th century, when the Great Famine struck Ireland, Galway was a way station for emigrants bound for the United States. Today this seaport at the head of Galway Bay with a population of 40,000 is probably the most sought after place in Ireland to live - its bright and airy, with lots of local events, entertainment, good pubs and shops. Furthermore, the city is on the edge of the wild open spaces of Connemara, with its mountains and waters of haunting beauty and silence. To the south is County Clare, another place of rugged grandeur and full of good music too...

FOOD AND DRINK: Thanks to places like Moran's the Weir, in Kilcolgan, about 15 miles south of Galway, the appreciation of seafood restaurants is growing. It is a thatch-roofed pub and seafood cottage off the main road to Limerick and its offerings of oysters and salmon have enchanted visitors. The oysters from Moran's own beds in Galway Bay are in season between September and April, and much of its fresh salmon is landed in summer literally outside the door of the pub. A plate of smoked salmon costs around $4.50 and it comes with crab or prawns for $7.30. For $8.40 there's a seafood special of salmon, crab, prawns and crabs' legs. Oysters in season cost $6.20 a dozen and are recommended with Guinness....

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