Mushroom Foraging at Kinnitty Castle Hotel

For a city girl, getting out into the countryside is something I just don’t do enough. It’s true, I own a pair of wellies. But their outings are often limited to the annual trip to The Electric Picnic.

So when I was invited down to Kinnitty Castle Hotel for a spot of mushroom foraging led by Bill O’Dea from Mushroom Stuff this weekend, my wellies’ hearts leapt with delight at the thought of stomping through forest grounds in search of fungi. And I was pretty psyched, too.

And so it was that an assorted group of bloggers and journalists and mushroom enthusiasts arrived at the stunning Kinnitty Castle Hotel in Kinnitty, Co Offaly on a drizzly October Saturday.

It’s believed there has been a castle on the grounds upon which Kinnitty Castle now stands as far back as 350AD. The ruins of the Kinnitty Abbey sit beside the castle, having been built in around the 6th century, but destroyed in the 800s. The castle itself also has a bit of a checkered history, being destroyed and rebuilt and burnt down and rebuilt and taken over and reclaimed and bought and sold in its time on this site.

Perhaps its most influential inhabitants of recent times would be the Bernard family, who came into ownership in 1764. It was Lady Catherine Hutchinson, the wife of Thomas Bernard, who commissioned the Pain Brothers to work on Kinnitty Castle in 1811. These famous architects, responsible for Dromoland Castle and Adare Manor, were the ones who created the neo-gothic aesthetic which has remained as the style of the castle to this day.

Its most recent history is that Atlantic Hospitality Services took over the running of the castle in April 2011, after the hotel went into receivership in 2008, having been owned by Cornelius Ryan since the 90s. Although AHS brought in a new management team and made a few changes to the interior, the castle remains much the same as it was and they have retained some members of staff who have worked within its walls for many years.

Our day at Kinnitty started in the Library Bar with tea and biscuits at noon, before we were ushered into the Slí Dala restaurant for lunch while Bill O’Dea from fungi foraging experts Mushroom Stuff introduced us to mushrooms and how to go about finding them in the wild.

After a warming lunch, and a stern talk about the dangers as well as the delights of mushroom picking, we were kitted out with foraging bags and brollies. With our feet securely fastened into our wellies, we headed out to the grounds of Kinnitty Castle in two groups, under strict instructions to pick whatever mushrooms we saw but to NOT eat ANYTHING.

My group decided to take the scenic route, so that we would have a chance to see more of the  650 acres of forest and parkland that make up the grounds of the castle, and hopefully find a few wee mushies along the way.

Spot the mushrooms?

I stayed close to Donal Skehan and his lovely lady Sophie, who really had the eye for the mushrooms. You can see in the photos that mushrooms often blend into their surroundings, and some people have the knack of seeing them clearly amongst the moss and trees. Donal compared Sophie to a truffle pig, she was so good at spotting them, which I’m pretty sure he meant in an affectionate way.

Donal and Sophie’s mushroom finds

My other foraging buddies were Kristin from Edible Ireland and Nessa Robbins from Nessa’s Family Kitchen. We spent nearly two hours gathering a few healthy looking fungi in the beautiful forest on the grounds of the castle before making our way back to the hotel, where hot toddies and slippers were waiting for us as Bill sorted through the mushrooms.

It turned out that the two groups, with a total of around 20 people, had amassed nearly 50 different varieties of mushrooms. However, only 5 of them were edible, and it was these 5 that were sent to the kitchen in Kinnitty Castle to be cooked up in some herb butter. They tasted amazing. Weird and wild mushrooms can not be beaten in their ability to present autumn to your tastebuds.

The evening continued after a little rest – wherein I think all of us made use of the amazing bath tubs in our stunning rooms – with drinks in The Library Bar, followed by dinner in the private dining room. Dinner just so happened to be an eight course tasting menu cooked for us by Executive Chef Anthony Holland, with matching wines for each course. It was pretty awesome.

Dinner in the private dining room. There was a lot of cutlery.

Girolle, cep, oyster mushroom and spinach roulade with parma ham, seared fig and truffle oil
Butternut squash soup with rosemary and sea salt focaccia

Baked rabbit loin wrapped in puff pastry with thyme, leek and confit carrot, garlic mousseline, red wine jus

Boulabán Farm apple cider sorbet

Seared supreme of halibut with sweet potato and beetroot crisps, rocket puree and lime and caper noisette

Our dinner included a knock out Slieve Bloom venison loin with venison and rosemary boudin, fondant potato, braised red cabbage puree and cranberry jam. Our dessert was a warm apple and blackberry filo parcel with Anglaise sauce, Boulabán Farm vanilla ice cream.

Those photos were, however, a little fuzzy. I wonder if the different wines with each course previous had something to do with that…?

We finished up with a platter of local cheeses, including Mossfield garlic and basil Gouda, Cashel Blue, St Killian’s camembert, Knockdrinna Meadow sheep’s cheese, Boilie goat’s cheese, pear chutney, red onion jam, tomato chutney, served with Churchills Reserve Port.

Platter of Irish cheeses

We retired after a few (okay, quite a few) drinks and a traditional music session in The Dungeon Bar which sits below the hotel.

Now, I wasn’t the only one who slept with the light on, as (like pretty much all other castles) Kinnitty Castle Hotel is supposed to be haunted. There were no sign of any ghosts during our stay, which I was secretly kind of disappointed by. Perhaps my next visit to this lovely spot will be more supernaturally fruitful.

Everything you need for a relaxing and revitalising country weekend is in Kinnitty Castle. You can get your nature hit on its beautiful grounds and have plenty of time to catch up on your reading in its Library Bar. There’s dinner in the Sli Dala restaurant and drinks and music in The Dungeon Bar. Country pursuits like horse-riding and clay pigeon shooting are available upon request, if you feel like bringing your tweed jacket and feathered trilby along with you. The 37 ensuite rooms, all original and unique, are so stunning that you may just want to chill in yours for the evening. Once inside the gates of the estate, basically, you don’t need to leave until checkout time.

A big thank you to the General Manager Andrew Lambert and his team at Kinnitty Castle Hotel for making our stay such a wonderful one. Thanks also to Joanna Hannick, the sales and marketing manager for AHS, for guiding us through the estate during our mushroom foraging. A giant thank you to Gillian and Tim from Host PR, who looked after us all so well throughout the entire weekend. And finally, a big thank you to the rest of the group for being such lovely company on our castle adventure.

I’ll definitely be visiting Kinnitty Castle Hotel again, to indulge once more in its quiet yet quirky atmosphere. And, hey, my wellies really need to get out more. So I’ll do it for them if nothing else.

Until then, here are a few more photos of Kinnitty Castle Hotel itself, including my beautiful Hutchinson Room.

Kinnitty Castle Hotel

The Library Bar

My bedroom in The Hutchinson room, named after Lady Catherine Hutchinson. She played a huge role in influencing the current design of the castle by hiring the Pain Brothers to redesign it in the 19th Century, as mentioned above.

The seating area in The Hutchinson Room

And finally, the amazing bathtub in The Hutchinson Room. Amazesuds.

For all further information, see the Kinnitty Castle Hotel website.

Kinnitty Castle

Kinnitty

Co Offaly

353 (0)57 9137318 

Email: reception[at]kinnittycastlehotel[dot]com

Categories: Blog Trips Tags: ,

19 Comments

  1. That looks rotten, poor you! And the horrible food and miserable bed that tones of old people probs died in – yock! I liked that stuffed otter.

  2. Wow. Sounds like an amazing day/night. Have always wanted to go on a mushroom hunt, am always afraid of picking them even when I’m sure of the identification. The meal looks fabulous too.

    • It really was an amazing night. After this, I still wouldn’t feel safe going out on an unaccompanied mushroom hunt. You should have a look at Mushroom Stuff’s website (www.mushroomstuff.com) and see if they’re doing another hunt in Dublin before the winter hits properly. They’re also on twitter @mushroomstuff and will identify through twitpics! Definitely have a look at their website :)

      • Actually, Stef, I’ve just looked at their website and it looks like their next hunt is this Saturday the 29th in Wicklow!

      • Yeah, I was on the site there a while back but I misread the date, thought it said 9 October for some reason. Cheers for the heads up!

  3. Would absolutely love to take part in an event like this – I adore mushrooms, but am so frightened of picking dangerous mushrooms. Having an expert on hand to help identify the different kinds would be so useful!!

    Kinitty Castle also looks amazing – I actually have a voucher for it that I must dig out to use.

  4. As I said to Stef above, I certainly wouldn’t be confident going out alone to pick mushrooms but I’m sure you would build your confidence after a few hunts! Definitely keep an eye on the Mushroom Stuff website for hunts, and try to go on the hunt this Saturday the 29th if possible :)

  5. Do you remember when the Happy Gang did a gig at Kinnitty Castle on New Year’s Eve, 2006(?)?

    Aidan and I stayed on an extra afternoon when everybody’d gone, so we could walk through the woods. We wandered totally aimlessly, playing music as we did so, like a pair of eejits. We ended up coming to this gigantic tree deep in the wood, and we were utterly speechless. Great place!

    I’m so jealous — I really want to go on a wild mushroom hunt! How many magic ones did you find? I’d say they were everywhere. Aidan calls that process of spotting mushrooms in the thick of woods “lertling”; as in, to find them, one must be “a lert”, ie alert, in other words “lertling”.

    Horhorhor.

    • I do remember that time you played there! I had totally forgotten that it was the same place, mad. Love the image of you and Aidan minstereling around the woods, yis mad boxes!

      We definitely picked up a few psychedelic mushrooms but…let’s just say it wasn’t that type of trip. No pun intended. Anyway, I can’t imagine that hotel is an appropriate place to take psychedlics as it’s full of stuffed animals on the walls and crazy wooden clocks and bizarre paintings and ghosts. It would have been TERRIFYING!

      It was a great, great weekend. Maybe if you guys are over next autumn we can organise a mushroom hunt with Bill from Mushroom Stuff, he was an excellent guide!

  6. Let’s definitely keep it in mind for next Autumn. And anyway, the next time you guys are home we should try to fit in a foraging trip as there are plenty of groups operating. Berry picking, wild garlic, all that kind of stuff. That’d be great!

  7. Beautiful photos and sounds like you had a totally amazing weekend! Probably just as well you couldn’t get here…. we couldn’t live up to that style! :)

    • We had a great time but it would have been the cherry on top to visit you and your piggies, Margaret. Next time, definitely!

  8. Hi Aoife, what an amazing way to spend a fall day! I was watching everyone’s tweets fervently…looked like a wonderful and gorgeous food! Def want to plan on it for next year. That apple cider looks divine =) Thanks for sharing! xx

    • Hi Imen! Wish you could have joined us, it was a wonderful day and night.

      I wonder if you could experiment with some apple cider sorbet at home…:)

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