Eating and Drinking in Drogheda

Drogheda is a town of over forty thousand people, which means it eats like a town rather than like a tourist stop. There is no single restaurant street and no cluster of identikit places waiting for coaches. What there is instead is a scattering of good rooms across both banks, a bakery that supplies half the town, a distillery on the edge of it, and a couple of pubs that have not changed their front since the nineteenth century. Here is how it actually breaks down.

The two rooms to book

D'Vine at Distillery House on Dyer Street opened in 2006 and has been the town's default good evening out ever since. The setting is a Georgian townhouse, the cooking is Mediterranean in the loose Irish sense of the word, and the wine list is the reason people go rather than a courtesy. Order the tapas plates if there are a few of you, or a flame-grilled Irish steak if there are two. Prices reflect its standing: steaks run into the high thirties and low forties, most other plates sit well below that. The practical thing to know is the timing. Table bookings start at 5pm and the last booking of the night falls somewhere between 8:30pm and 9:30pm depending on the day, so a nine o'clock table is not something to assume. Book through their own reservations page.

Scholars, off King Street on the north side, is the other room worth reserving. The building was a Christian Brothers monastery for its first century and the dining room still has the proportions and the ceiling of that life. It carries two AA rosettes, cooks modern Irish, and is where the town takes its anniversaries and its christening lunches. There is a bar and gastrolounge alongside for a less formal version of the same kitchen, and the afternoon tea, made by their own pastry team, has to be booked a full day ahead. Weekend function trade is heavy, so if you want a quiet Saturday, say so when you book.

Daytime

Five Good Things is the most useful address in the town for anyone walking it. It shares a building with Highlanes Gallery and has its own door onto St Laurence Street, so you can come out of an exhibition and straight into brunch. It runs Monday to Saturday from 9am to 3pm and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, which means it is squarely a daytime proposition and closes before dinner. The menu changes rather than sitting still.

For bread and everyday baking, McCloskey's is the name. The bakery itself is on the Ballymakenny Road on the north side, and the company runs a shop on Trinity Street and the Moorland Cafe and Bakery at 96 and 97 West Street. It is a working commercial bakery rather than an artisan boutique, which is exactly why it is worth knowing: this is what the town actually eats. The West Street cafe is the one you will pass without looking for it.

Where to drink

Clarke's on Peter Street is the pub to send anyone to who asks where to get a proper pint in Drogheda. The front reads Patrick Clarke, Wine and Spirit Merchant in gold on a dark board, the timber pilasters of the old spirit grocer are still in place, and there is no food, no menu and no attempt at one. It is a drinking and talking room, and an evening one; do not arrive at noon expecting company.

The Hops Bar at the d hotel is the opposite proposition and useful for it: modern, on the south bank at Marsh Road with the Boyne boardwalk outside the windows, and one of very few places in Drogheda where you can sit with a drink and look at the river. The drinks list leans deliberately local, with spirits from the distilleries around the town and local craft beer, and there is a bar menu and a kids' menu. It runs Friday to Sunday, 11am to midnight, and shows sport at weekends.

Newest on the list is Sunday Street at Sunday's Gate on the north side, a rooms-and-restaurant conversion doing Neapolitan pizza and small plates with a bar attached. Be honest with yourself that it is still finding its shape: the twelve bedrooms opened before the restaurant did, so check what is running before you build a night around it. Tables book online.

What the town makes

Drogheda has a real drinks history. Cairnes beer, Preston's whiskey and Dan Kelly's cider were all Drogheda names, and at various points the town bottled Guinness and Jameson and made Coca-Cola concentrate. The living end of that tradition is Boann Distillery, out at Lagavooren on the Platin Road at the edge of the town, just off Junction 8 of the M1 and, despite the Drogheda address, in Co. Meath. The Cooney family built it and named it for the goddess the Boyne itself is named after. They make the Boann whiskey range and The Whistler, plus Silks and Copper Cloud gins. The shop opens Monday to Saturday from 10:30am to 5:30pm and Sunday from 12:30pm, but the tour is the tighter thing: one a week, Fridays at 3pm, so book rather than turn up. It is also properly accessible, with a wheelchair lift, an accessible shop and a modified tour route.

For something to bring home that is not a bottle, Ballymakenny Farm at Carstown grows six varieties of heritage and speciality potato and sells them direct through what they call the Spudshack. Order first by phone or online rather than calling in; it is a working farm, not a shop.