This 200-year-old cottage in the middle of nowhere has been given a Michelin star

(CNN) — A year and a half ago, chef Robbie McCauley left behind the swanky kitchens of some of the UK and Ireland’s best restaurants to cook in a remote Irish cottage on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic.

The low, whitewashed, flagstone-roofed building surrounded by empty green fields, miles from the nearest town, looks the very definition of rural Ireland.

Close by are the Cliffs of Moher. This dramatic, windswept landscape carved by wild oceans stands on the westernmost edge of Europe and has made numerous movie appearances. To the north is Doolin, a village known for its traditional music scene.

Though popular with tourists, the far-flung setting and the cottage’s rustic appearance are a far cry from the white-linen-tableclothed world of fine dining. Expense-account diners and fashionistas are nowhere to be seen.

And yet, within months of McCauley and his wife Sophie opening Homestead Cottage in County Clare, the Michelin Guide gave it a star, while others have hailed it the best restaurant in Ireland — strong praise in a country known for culinary excellence.

The bucolic setting hasn’t done the restaurant any harm, with Michelin calling it “surely the most rural” of their newest winners, while noting the “wonderful Irish produce” at the heart of its menu.

It’s an achievement all the more remarkable given the precariousness of the restaurant industry in Ireland and many other countries in recent years, with the fate of many hanging on a metaphorical cliff edge just as vertiginous as the landscape on which Homestead Cottage is perched.

A new challenge

McCauley, from Scotland, and his French restaurateur wife seem more interested in the unique flavors of their westerly corner of Ireland than in winning awards.

“Our ethos is local, seasonal and the best quality we can find,” McCauley tells CNN.

McCauley has been living in the west of Ireland since 2013 but it would be unfair to call him a “blow-in,” as outsiders are known here.

His mother hails from the region and his grandfather was an independent dairy farmer here. McCauley says he always felt “a kind of a draw to Clare.”

After training at the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts in London and cooking in top restaurants like Number One in Edinburgh and Campagne in Kilkenny, Ireland, he took a job at the restaurant in Gregan’s Castle Hotel in the Burren, County Clare, where he ultimately became head chef, and met his future wife.

By 2023, McCauley was ready for a new challenge.

A local businessman offered the couple the lease on the 200-year-old stonemason’s cottage outside the village of Doolin near the famous Cliffs of Moher. McCauley was skeptical. It was Sophie, eight months pregnant at the time, who said they “might as well try it.”

Rave reviews

The couple liked the bones of the place.

“I think at the time, something kind of just fitted in my mind,” McCauley says.

The couple had six weeks to get the place up and running. And then, two weeks to the day before they opened, Sophie had baby Iris.

“It was definitely intense!” McCauley laughs.

But those first few weeks in July 2023 were quiet. Then came a rave review from The Irish Times and McCauley says “it just went crazy” after that. By February 2024 they had a Michelin star.

“That definitely wasn’t something that we had ever expected, especially so quickly,” says McCauley.

Homestead Cottage offers a set rather than à la carte menu, which means as little waste as possible. McCauley enjoys the “freedom to be able to adapt rather than be stuck to a menu that’s written.”

That might mean choosing garlic, broad beans and kohlrabi from their garden. This will be their fourth year growing asparagus and they’re looking forward to their patience paying off with their first good crop.

“The difference is night and day, for the flavor. And then you’re really cooking with the seasons.”

For McCauley Irish cuisine is not so much about the food, but the produce.

He calls Irish dairy “a world-class product” and thinks Ireland should take more pride in its beef and lamb. “There isn’t the grain pumped into them like in in so many countries. Ninety percent of it is finished on grass.”

Ancient landscape

McCauley’s dishes feature local place names, the location inextricably linked to the produce: North Clare’s Flaggy Shore oysters; Moher crab; Connemara scallops; Aran monkfish; Burren beef.

The restaurant is in a region of Clare called The Burren, an area of 330-million-year-old limestone pavements and diverse flora that has UNESCO global geopark status.

McCauley is such a fan of the unique flavor of Burren meat he believes it should have protected status “like Galician beef and Limousin veal,” of northern Spain and central France respectively.

The chef gives most of the credit for his celebrated cooking to his suppliers.

“It takes vegetable growers the bones of six months to get this stuff to us; the butcher raising the lambs — six to eight months. We’re just cooking it at the end of the day. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

The Haughs are one of McCauley’s suppliers. Fiona and her father Sean run Market Hall, an award-winning butcher shop and delicatessen in the pretty town of Ennistymon about eight miles (13 kilometers) from Homestead Cottage.

Sean has a farm on the Kilkee cliff walk, to the south. He’s involved in every stage from sourcing to butchering his local beef and lamb.

Fiona says she’s known McCauley for years, since he first came in looking for “random things, like lamb’s bread.”

“Robbie is just another level,” she tells CNN. “Outstanding. I’d never tasted anything like Robbie’s cooking.”

She will sometimes allow him behind the counter when he visits the butcher shop.

“Can you cut it this way? Can you do this? That’s the way Robbie is,” she laughs. “He knows what he wants, from nose to tail. So that’s why I let him in, because he knows more than me!”

McCauley says he feels fortunate “especially at the moment when things are so tough for the restaurant industry. We’ve no backers. It’s just ourselves.”

Tough times

He’s not surprised that many restaurants are shuttering, blaming the price of produce, soaring utility bills and spiraling staff costs alongside taxes on food and alcohol. People are drinking less these days too, he says, and hotels with the stability of rooms have an advantage over standalone restaurants.

He wants the Irish government to act.

“Tourism and hospitality support so many jobs throughout so much of the country, especially rurally. If you lose that, we can’t be replaced by chains.”

He wants to see more catering courses and apprenticeship schemes, especially in rural areas.

Visitors to Homestead Cottage will find tables made from the floorboards of an old mill, with old Singer sewing-machine legs. A crackling fire warms the room on chillier days. There are local flagstones underfoot.

“Fine dining is still seen as quite kind of “white tablecloth, that kind of formality,” McCauley says, “But the people who get it, they really get it.”

Robbie and Sophie are nearing the end of their first year with a Michelin star. In February, they’ll find out if they’ve held onto it.

“I think we’re cooking good food and I hope Michelin keeps appreciating that, but we’re not too hung up about it,” McCauley says. “End of the day, we need a busy restaurant to pay the bills and to pay our staff rather than having the prestige of a Michelin star.”

McCauley is instead dreaming about the dishes of 2025.

“We should be getting really nice, large turbots in February, when the water’s still cold,” he says. “And then, in the summer, I always love when we get beautiful tomatoes, fantastic crab, lobster…”

There is one prediction, closer to home, that he’s comfortable making:

“For the first three things for this year, it’s going to be lamb, wild garlic and asparagus.”

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