Northern Ireland's seafood trails

For an island nation, we can be unadventurous consumers of seafood, but food-lovers in Northern Ireland are keen to change all that. Margaret Bartlett samples fruits of the ocean on a harbour-hopping tour

- Margaret Bartlett

Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap. “Oh, there it goes - that wee one’s for the pot.” The mussel in my hand slowly and silently hinges shut, like a lid on a fancy electronic bin. “If it closes completely that’s a good healthy mussel and it can go in,” explains resident chef Annette Grant. “Closed going in, open coming out.”

At Mourne Seafood Cookery School in Kilkeel, the air is rich with the aroma of garlic, onion and celery sizzling in white wine as Annette teaches us how to prepare local mussels the classic way. After only 10 minutes of steaming, we’re tucking in around the kitchen bench, slurping sounds compulsory. As we mop up the sauce with hunks of cheesy chorizo soda bread we baked earlier, my seafood-obsessed son quizzes Annette on how to cook a lobster, humanely. While she describes how to stun the lobster then swiftly cut its underside down the centre from head to tail, I feel a need for distraction and gaze through the picture windows at the colourful harbour below.

Quiet on this bank holiday Monday, Kilkeel’s port is normally noisy and bustling with forklifts, trawlers and fishers mending nets. Northern Ireland’s largest fishing port is home to a 200-strong fleet of vessels (mainly catching langoustine, or Dublin Bay prawns; their peeled tails are scampi), a quayside fish market and processing factories, including Sea Source, where they prepare langoustine, scallops in season and whitefish for market. It’s a fitting place to begin our exploration of the country’s 15 family-focused Seafood Trails - a project launched in 2022 to encourage locals to eat more of the delicacies caught or farmed in Northern Ireland’s waters. Each trail focuses on a harbour or two, highlighting activities plus the area’s seafood eateries and retailers.

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