Carlingford Oyster Company
Carlingford, Co. Louth
About
The Carlingford oyster is the reason the village has a food reputation at all, and this is the family that rebuilt it. Peter Louet-Feisser came to Carlingford in the late 1960s, heard a radio broadcast about oyster farming, and started the company in 1974; his son Kian and Kian's wife Mary run it now, with Peter's daughter Charm on sales and grandchildren drafted in during the holidays. The farm produces around two and a half million Irish rock oysters a year in Carlingford Lough and ships them to restaurants across Ireland and abroad, with a premium Louet-Feisser grade hand-selected off the top of the crop. You will meet them on menus all over the village, and they are the centrepiece of the Oyster Festival in August. This is a working shellfish farm rather than a visitor attraction, so treat any farm visit as something to arrange rather than turn up for.