At the Heart of the Midlands

Abbeyleix sort of stands as the crossroads of Ireland. A certain midpoint in the Midlands and a key artery connecting the country. Continue straight on the road coming from Dublin and you’ll find yourself on the old N8 road to Cork, cutting through Munster on your way to the People’s Republic. A right or left turn in the town, depending on how you look at it, will send you into Kilkenny or onwards West. Abbeyleix was always a halfway house. Most people associated the town historically with one thing and one thing only: the road in and out of it; others would say you’d pass through Laois ten times before you’d stop in it. We’d like to think now, however, that this certainly isn’t the case.

Mention the town to most people and one name comes up straight away: Morrissey’s, the pub that not only serves a great pint, but was also a traditional stopping point regardless of where you were coming from or going to. Ham sandwiches were aplenty, so we hear. Long gone are the days of driving straight through Laois with nowhere to stop and eat. These offerings anchor us as an area that truly appreciates its food, and one with a richer culinary offering than most.

Given our location, we couldn’t be more blessed with the amount of produce around us. The last time we checked, there were a total of 52 growers within 90 minutes of Ómós. It’s quite a staggering number and I’m sure there are plenty more that we don’t know about! This is certainly a rarity and one we don’t take for granted. From small family-run farms to specialist producers, each brings something distinct to our kitchen. For us, it feels less of a coincidence and more like a meeting of chance and fate as to how prime our location truly is. We are fortunate enough to be tucked in at the crossroads surrounded by the country’s finest producers. Given that, we wanted to take a moment to spotlight some of those local to us. Those whose work quietly shapes what ends up on the plate and without whom the food we serve wouldn’t be possible.

Just half an hour away from us, nestled on the banks of the River Barrow, sits Garryhinch Mushrooms in Co. Offaly. We’ve often mistook Garryhinch as the man behind the mushrooms, but it’s actually the name of the place itself. It’s a family-run organic mushroom farm which has been going for over 36 years. They supply the country with Shiitake, King Oyster, Yellow Oyster, Grey Oyster, Maitake, Lion’s Mane, Nameko and White Beech mushrooms. What a privilege it is to have access to such an array of exotic and lesser-spotted varieties so local to us. Having experimented with this wide selection in the test kitchen last winter and now seeing it find pride of place on our menu today, the journey has been as fulfilling as the relationship we’ve built with the supplier along the way. These mushrooms now provide the backbone of our shiitake dish in the form of lightly set jelly. Who’s to say what the coming months and the local woodlands around us will bring in terms of mushroom offerings too!

All the berries we have been using come from the Phelan family’s Rose Farm Cottage in Mountrath, Co. Laois, just on the far side of Abbeyleix. Here, berries have been grown since 1982. What started out as just four rows of strawberries has seen the business thrive year on year, offering up strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, cherries and wild plums. By chance, Rose Cottage also supplies Ballymaloe House and Cookery School with their fruit offering. Ballymaloe is, as many readers would know, a place we find hugely inspirational, and was a key reference point for Ómós and what we wanted to create. Little did we know that the very jams and preserves we had been enjoying at Ballymaloe on one of our many research trips were made from fruit grown just 10 minutes away from where we are now. Having this fruit now also adorn our breakfast menu has been a full circle moment for us, to say the least. Their seasonal offerings have found their way into our desserts as well, none more so than when strawberries were at their best: the star of a dish featuring those Irish summer strawberries, finished with rose and black pepper and a strawberry and cherry blossom oil juice.

A revelation for many of our staff has been the Jersey cows’ milk and dairy products coming from The Village Dairy in Killeshin, just on the Laois-Carlow border. Their tagline has always been “milk that tastes like your childhood” and there is something so comforting about their produce. A staff favourite is a splash of their fresh cream in our pre-service coffee, just a tad indulgent, but well worth it. It’s the little things, I suppose. Their herd of Jersey cows produces a milk that is richer and creamier in taste than most. It’s been going down a real hit in the guesthouse during breakfast time too. This is the milk that gives our cultured butter that richness, able to hold up against the funk you get when we age it in-house, served atop our potato dish, which for the moment features the Irish Golden variety.

We have, and no doubt will, talk for posts to come about our producers, because quite literally, it is our bread and butter. In the end, it’s the people just down the road who make Ómós what it is: the mushroom growers on the banks of the Barrow, the berry farmers of Mountrath, the dairy we get just over the Carlow border. None of them set out to be part of anyone’s story but their own, yet together they’ve quietly written ours. Aren’t we glad they have, though. That’s the real gift of being at the crossroads: not the traffic passing through, but the produce passing our way. It’s this produce that we seek to honour, and who knows, we’d like to think that how we do so will give you just one more reason to stop in Abbeyleix rather than drive on through.