Ballinahown Tea Rooms

Our food ethos is as close to organic as possible without costing extra or making you feel too healthy!!

Ballinahown is a very sleepy little village in the Westmeath countryside.  You’d be happy to stumble across it – and very happy to stumble into the Ballinahown Tea Rooms for some light refreshments on the journey.  These tea rooms are off the beaten track, situated above the Core Crafted Design gallery in the village, and definitely a welcome and timely addition to an area which has art and craft at its core.

Proprietor of the Ballinahown Tea Rooms, Helen Conneely, is an Irish bog wood artist who also runs the Ballinahown Design Shop and Celtic Roots art studio just across the road.  Her art gallery and studio incorporates a comprehensive history and museum of working with bog wood as a material with hands on demo areas where bog wood craftspeople show their skills, as well as the amazing crafted pieces on display and for sale.  The story of how she started is quite amazing too.  Her love of this ancient natural material came during a long career as a civil engineer, working on bog land sites in Ireland.  During excavations, chunks of bog wood were often discovered, and so began a project with local artists to recycle these woods for craft use.  Helen’s lifelong love of art and creativity fired her own imagination to work with the wood too.  Before long, the hobby that derived from her job became a huge love of her life.  Her days of civil engineering have been replaced by sculpting with bog wood to create some award winning pieces, and running the two galleries which support local and Irish crafts people and artists.  Her Tea Rooms are a worthy addition to all this.

The idea stemmed from the number of hungry and thirsty travellers who passed through the village and visited both galleries.  Celtic Roots design is located in Helen’s original cottage home, with every nook and cranny taken up with art displays and sales.  There was space though in the upper floor of the other gallery across the road, in fact the perfect spot to house an off the wall café as vibrant in its ambience – and with the same ethos of local and handmade produce at the heart of its menu.

This truly is a magical place to stop for tea and coffee – it’s one of those great little finds you can’t believe you’ve come across.  We are very glad to have discovered it for ourselves.  Upstairs from the gallery and shop floor, which sells arts and crafts from 40 local artists, a cute seating space and self, serve counter to the overlooks the village’s main thoroughfare.  This is the prettiest of rooms – a higgledy piggledy collection of soft sofas and mismatched antique tables and chairs, fresh flower posies, lovely displays of chinaware for sale and as decoration, and an open plan serving area groaning with house baking.  A smaller room outside houses overspill, again another cosy area to relax if the place is busy.  Menus here are pasted into old hard back books – it’s a funky way to do it we think, and really in keeping with the arty crafty cultural aspect here.  The counter holds a lively choice of house breads, including brown and white soda, Guinness seeded, multigrain, and treacle brown.  A veritable variety of home baking is really all about inspiration and whatever takes the cook’s fancy on the day. We especially liked homemade caramel bars though!  Very yummy!  There’s usually a soup of the day made from organic veggies where possible.  These come from a local small holder who also supplies peppery salad leaves.  Cold plates include Irish cheeses with pickle and salad, Connemara Smoked Salmon, chicken or home cooked ham salad and gorgeous tartlets baked to order.  We couldn’t exactly call our very delicious baked to order tartlet a ‘quiche’, it was packed with Irish farmhouse cheese and sundried tomatoes, and the minute you cut into the crisp buttery short crust pastry, the eggy cheese filling gently melted onto the plate.  Absolutely divine and we vote this the best place to eat a tartlet in the land.  You might have to wait a short while for it to come out of the oven but we guarantee you won’t eat a finer specimen anywhere.  A selection of wines is available to accompany your food, plus tea and coffee, soft drinks and Irish apple juice.  We anticipate you will love this place – and you will also love the arts and crafts for sale and in the Celtic Gallery where you can learn about the bogwood crafts comprehensively.  These two galleries make a good combination of creative talent with great homemade food which also has a local handmade slant. What more can we say?

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Ballinahown Tea Rooms Menu

Contact Details

To Contact a Member Directly, please click on the email or website below

Ballinahown Village
Athlone
Co Westmeath
+353 (0) 906 430404
Email: info@ballinahowntearooms.com
Web: www.ballinahowntearooms.com

 

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