When farmer’s wife Myrtle Allen opened a restaurant in her Georgian farmhouse back in 1964, she did not dream that she was starting a quiet revolution in Irish food, or that her home would become the epitome of country house hotel style.

In shades of heather and bracken, Slieve Foy rises behind the Carroll family’s listed Georgian house.

In a spa town on the edge of the Burren, a landscape of ash and hazel woodland, of grassland, cliffs and fen, this Michelin-starred pub-with-rooms attracts discerning diners with its refined bistro cooking and country-cosy accommodation.

Remote and remarkable, Ruairí and Marie-Thérèse de Blacam’s sustainably run restaurant-with-suites blends in to the rugged landscape of its Aran island setting.