Popular Bandon seafood restaurant Poachers is go up for sale, with the premises and business going on the market. The restaurant was recommended by the Michelin Guide several times over the years.<\/p>\n
Proprietor Barry McLoughlin\u2019s social media announcement that he and wife Catherine were stepping away after two decades triggered an avalanche of online responses mourning their departure from the extremely popular West Cork restaurant.<\/p>\n
Poachers opened in 2006 as Poacher’s Inn, a gastropub with a pronounced focus on delivering dishes using fresh Irish fish and seafood, sourcing as much as possible from the shores of its West Cork hinterland.<\/p>\n
An early adopter of the now increasingly more popular seafood-driven restaurant model, it proved an almost immediate hit with the local dining public and soon built up an accompanying national reputation, at one stage appearing in the McKenna\u2019s Guides 100 Best Irish Restaurants in 2012.<\/p>\n
It was also recommended in the esteemed Michelin Guide for many years, beginning in 2008, which was greatly taken with the \u201ccosy bar \u2026 small snug [and] dining room under the eaves\u201d, saying that \u201clocal seafood is the star of the show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be hard to say goodbye because we\u2019ve loved our time here,\u201d said Barry McLaughlin. \u201cCatherine\u2019s first job as a barperson at 16 was back when it was just a pub, Reilly\u2019s Daughter, so she has always had a huge connection to the place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a great run and are very proud of what we achieved and we\u2019ve nothing but fond memories of the place and all the people who dined here, and we are very grateful to our loyal local supporters and those who travelled from elsewhere over the years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barry McLoughlin in Poachers Restaurant, Bandon. Picture: Noel Sweeney<\/p>\n
The McLaughlins are very hopeful that the next owners will be keen to continue the food and hospitality tradition they first established and expand further on its potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an exciting prospect for anyone who takes it on,\u201d said Barry, \u201cThe original restaurant space downstairs has 60 seats, and then during covid we developed a lovely, atmospheric upstairs room with 50 seats and also the garden which has another 50 seats and is great in the summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it takes an awful lot of energy and, to be honest, the energy of youth, to run a place the size of Poachers, and as I hit a big birthday in recent years, we wanted to step back a little from that level of commitment.<\/p>\n
\n We wanted to move on while we still had the energy and enthusiasm and a few years left to try our hand at something else.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019ve decided to explore other opportunities that would give us a bit more flexibility and free up a bit more of our time \u2014 we\u2019re very excited for the future and we\u2019re not necessarily done with hospitality so watch this space!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Popular Bandon seafood restaurant Poachers is go up for sale, with the premises and business going on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,48520],"class_list":{"0":"post-253146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-restaurant-reviews-wine-darina-allen-currabinny-food-news-the-menu-taste-tests"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}