OffTheBeatenCraic Episodes

Irish Stew wraps its Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands Series in Drumshanbo, the Co. Leitrim town rewriting the rural renewal playbook. What began as a desperate effort to save a shuttered jam factory has become one of Ireland's most remarkable community-led success stories. At The Food Hub in Drumshanbo, cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee hear from Cllr Enda McGloin and onsite manager Fergal McPartland how a voluntary local committee refused to let the abandoned jam factory slip a...

Irish Stew’s latest “Off the Beaten Craic” adventure in County Leitrim discovers three new ways to slow down, tune in, and taste this corner of Ireland, through food, forest, and a gentle spin along the Jackalope Trail. First, we meet Malaysian‑born chef and restaurateur Sham Hanifa. At age 20 he answered an ad to work in Ireland, arriving in Carrick‑on‑Shannon jet‑lagged and short on money, but today he anchors the local food scene with The Cottage, My Kitchen, and Buffalo Boy, blending Iris...

It may be the smallest county in Connacht, the smallest by population in Ireland, with the smallest stretch of beach on the Wild Atlantic Way, but in their latest episode the Irish Stew podcasters learn that Leitrim is capitalizing on its offer of a great quality of life, relative affordability, entrepreneurial energy, appeal to a more mobile workforce, and its “slow adventure” approach experiencing its natural allure. Arriving in Carrick-on-Shannon, the cohosts head to the offices of the Lei...

Irish Stew Podcast is “Off the Beaten Craic” in Co. Longford for the sound of the low whistle and the sight of an Iron Age roadway at the Corlea Trackway Visitors Centre, located a half hour’s drive north from their home-away-from-home in Athlone. There they met their guide Noel Carberry who opens and closes the interview with his virtuosity on the larger, lower-pitched variation of the traditional tin whistle. Noel is a 26-year-veteran of the Corlea Trackway Visitors Centre, a “life sentence...

The Irish Stew podcasters venture across Westmeath one last time, to the county’s eastern reaches to explore the picturesque village of Tyrrellspass, where they once again find a story of community commitment…and a bog. The community leader giving cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty the grand tour of his charming town is Eugene Dunbar, a retired teacher who never retired from educating anyone who’d listen about the treasures unique to Tyrrellspass. After meeting Eugene at the town’s centerpi...

The Irish Midlands flow to the relentless rhythm of the River Shannon and along its banks the Irish Stew podcasters found themselves again, Day Five of their “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands” wanderings, gazing across its broad expanse from the docks of the County Offaly town of Banagher. There, cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty met local historian James Scully and caught up with an old friend of John’s, Mark Boylan, who covers horseracing for The Irish Field, to explore the his...

Ireland has no shortage of stately manors, but as Irish Stew hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee learned, no other historic property has a legacy like Co. Offaly’s Birr Castle Demesne, which for generations has been an incubator of breakthroughs in engineering and science. With local historian and educator Brian Kennedy as their guide, the podcasters share the story of the Victorian-era, steampunk-style construction of timber, iron, and stonework that was the world’s largest telescope from 1845 t...

The poet Seamus Heaney once said, "I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself." And that territory is 14- to- 21 percent bog. So, on their fourth day “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands,” Irish Stew cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty head to Shinrone in Offaly near the Tipperary border to the farm of Donie Regan, a demonstration site for Peatlands for Prosperity, the brainchild of Douglas McMillan and his Green Restoration I...

How did Ireland become a food destination? Thanks go to chefs like John Coffey of Athlone’s Thyme Restaurant and Belfast’s Niall McKenna of the Waterman House, both past Irish Stew guests. But ask those chefs that question and they’ll thank their lucky stars for the local producers who supply the fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, seafood, and dairy that make their cooking soar. So Irish Stew went Off the Beaten Craic to Daingean, Co. Offaly, to talk with two farmers on the vanguard of Ireland...

Despite the “Off the Beaten Craic” theme to the current Irish Stew podcast series, on this episode hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee follow the well-worn track of history that flows through Athlone like the broad River Shannon. Their guide is the affable Vincent Harney of Athlone Guided Tours, a well-researched, perceptive storyteller who peels back the layers of the Athlone story from atop Athlone Castle, while crossing the Shannon, and as they trod the ancient streets back into the very heart...

The oldest pub in Ireland, Europe…the world? Lend an ear as we explore the legend and lore of Sean’s Bar with the pub’s official storyteller Timmy Donovan. A central character in the Sean’s Bar story for the past 37 years, Timmy flips the calendar back to AD 900 when Luain Mac Luighdeach set up an inn on the banks of the Shannon which would evolve over the centuries into the Sean’s Bar of today. He points out the ancient wicker-and-wattle construction unearthed in the venerable pub’s plaster ...

Taste Ireland…more specifically, taste the Hidden Heartlands of the Irish Midlands through a completely original cuisine designed around the fresh local produce from surrounding farms, on offer at Athlone’s Michelin Bib Gourmand culinary destination, Thyme Restaurant. Some but not all of the exceptional plates we encountered at Thyme Restaurant in Athlone Chef John Coffey conjures up his ever-evolving menu around the vegetables local organic farmer Shannon is pulling or plucking from her nea...

Your cohosts are back from an eight-day road trip through Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, where instead of profiling a person, they went “Off the Beaten Craic” to explore a place - the Irish Midlands. Some tourists might view it as "drive-through country,” as they motor west from Dublin to the Wild Atlantic Way, but John and Martin found just a fraction of what they’re missing in Offaly, Westmeath, Longford, and Leitrim. And by traveling at a leisurely “slow tourism” pace during the quieter fall...