The Misunderstood Heron. (Image via Instagram @misunderstood_heron)
“Best Weekly Column on Arts, Culture, Food, and Leisure,” said the Catholic Media Association this year of my humble Angelus offering.
Food! Who knew? Not only had I been derelict in my duty, I realized, but my horizon had considerably widened.
To that end let me bring you to the Irish village of Leenane, and a food truck with a global following: Misunderstood Heron.
“Fresh, Local, Never Conventional” are its watchwords.
A café with wild Atlantic produce and views, the wood-paneled truck sits on a bluff overlooking the Killary Fjord in County Galway’s Connemara coast.
A married couple — Kim Young of Leenane, and Chilean-born Reinaldo Seco — launched the Heron in 2017, thinking to offer an experience that combined stunning sea vistas with a unique menu and a singular dining experience.
The food is seasonal and local: foraged, fermented, caught, and picked for the most part within miles of where you’re sitting.
“With quirky & uniquely styled outdoor seating, as well as a focus on environmental sustainability, if you are looking for somewhere to eat along the Wild Atlantic Way in County Galway this is an unrivaled Connemara foodie experience,” their website beckons.
My NYC vegan friend Patrick and I visited a couple of times last year and still talk about the experience: the one-of-a-kind setting; the friendly, offbeat vibe; and mostly, the food.
A charming boy of maybe 12 — the owners’ son? — took our order and manned the till. We had pasties: crisped tender-crusted miniature pies stuffed with beautifully seasoned mushrooms, smoked haddock, and wild garlic.
We had a dish with roasted root vegetables, chunky hummus, and a hank of meltingly tender braised cabbage, served on a rustic hand-crafted flatbread studded with cumin seeds, and bathed in a sauce redolent of desert winds and pyramids. We had frittata, lentils with herbs, and house-crafted pickles, and crusty brown bread.
All around us people were gnawing on lamb chops and slurping down mussels, the midnight-blue shells heaped into large cardboard bowls.
The recyclable cutlery and napkins are housed in a rustic wood glass-sided box. Clumps of gladioli dot the surrounding gorse. A stiff wind blows, meaning that everything that isn’t weighted or nailed down (including possibly your lunch) is in danger of being carried off in the wind.
Afterward, we chose from a lavish array of cakes, featuring local apples, blackberries, apricots.
The coffee is superb — the best in Connemara, the Heron boasts — and pairs perfectly with the bog smells and brisk salt air.
I’d been called back to Ireland for a week this September, and the whole intervening year, the Misunderstood Heron figured prominently in my thoughts. This time I’ll have the mussels, I mused. Maybe a salad of fiddlehead ferns, a pumpkin seed pesto, a chocolate, almond and brandy cream torte!
Dee, another Manhattan friend, had flown in, rented a car, and attended the weeklong memoir-writing workshop I gave at Connemara’s Kylemore Abbey. “I’ll take you to the Misunderstood Heron when we’re through!” I’d promised repeatedly. “We’ll get mussels to start,” I’d blabbed, probably five times.
The day came. We said our goodbyes, loaded our bags, and chuckled at the soft drizzle that was beginning to fall. The Heron was a mere nine miles down the road and we found the spot easily. Approaching, we saw that cars lined both sides of the road for at least the length of a couple of city blocks.
My heart sank. Unless some other event was underway, I couldn’t imagine the length of the line at the food truck.
At that exact moment, the heavens opened and a drenching rain began to fall. We looked at each other, alit from the car nonetheless, and within three steps agreed: We can’t do this.
Pulling out we saw a whole crew of folks in oilskins, trudging doggedly against the wind and toting plastic bags of what we took to be takeout. Those hardy Irish folk!
We proceeded on to Sligo, where we spent the night and, Sunday morning, found our way to the river that flows through town. We followed the banks of the Garavogue for half an hour or so.
The trees were just beginning to turn color. The sun shone. The riverway stretched sinuously and invitingly on. How I would love to have kept walking!
Instead we turned back toward town, and made our way to a glorious noon Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception — another place that (from the photos) I had longed and planned to visit.
The voices of the choir rang out from the balcony. Four solemn young altar servers assisted the priest with candles and censer. In the pew before us, a tiny boy with tousled blond hair, accompanied by his granny, whispered “Forever and ever” into the ether.
So that part of the plan at least came off, and if I were to choose among the food truck, the walk and the Mass… As St. Irenaeus, Greek bishop born A.D. 140, observed, “The glory of God is a man fully alive.” Take this, and eat of it.
So — no mussels this year.
And apparently Lonely Planet has named the Misunderstood Heron the coolest food truck in the world.
You know what that means.
Next time you’re in Connemara — get there early.