Birgitta Hedin-Curtin – Burren Smokehouse

Birgitta Hedin-Curtin

Burren Smokehouse

Lisdoonvarna in County Clare may seem to be the most unlikely place in the world for a farmer’s daughter from a forestry outside of Nyköping on Sweden’s Baltic coast to settle. It did to me, until I sat down for a coffee with Birgitta Hedin-Curtin. Then it made perfect sense.

Now well known beyond the borders of the Burren and representing artisan Irish produce beyond the shores of this island, Birgitta wandered into Lisdoonvarna as an eighteen-year-old student in search of traditional music. She’d just finished gymnasium (the Swedish equivalent of the senior cycle and Leaving Cert) and was travelling with friends to experience Irish culture and begin her casual study of the Atlantic.

A lift from an American musician on his way to Doolin (her intended destination for music) detoured through the Roadside Tavern where publican Peter Curtin greeted the group with pints of Guinness and his now-famous banter. Mr Curtin neither remembers (nor will he admit) if he knew that he might bump into Birgitta were he to make his way to the session at O’Connor’s pub, but that’s where they met for the second time in one day. Neither looked back.

Their long-distance relationship was necessitated by the difference in tuition for a native Swede to study at home versus here in Ireland. Finding a way to focus her love for marine biology into a reason to get back to the west of Ireland, Birgitta landed a fellowship with NUI Galway professor Dr Michael Gormally at the university’s Finavarra Field Research Station.

With 450 varieties of seaweed to study, stunning views across the bay to the Burren proper and an international community of like-minded young people who were drawn to the area in the early 1980s (let alone that she was little more than half an hour’s drive from Lisdoonvarna and Peter), the phycology student found her footing in the local community and became rooted like a wild hazel in the crag.

Although far from the farm on the Baltic coast where she was raised, Birgitta found similar joys of foraging, wild game and myriad outdoor activities. One thing she did miss, however, was the hotsmoked eels of her youth.

She and her father would tend fyke nets from their small boat each eel season. The day’s catch was given over to a local fisherman who ran a small smokehouse using traditional methods and

live, smouldering fire. She remembered Stockholmares on holidays making their way to the fisherman’s smokehouse to enjoy his wares while at their summer homes or to take back to the city to remind them of their visits. He also sold his smoked eels (and other smoked fish) alongside the day’s freshly landed catch at the local farmers’ market in the town. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, she thought, if there were some iconic west coast of Ireland food product that could bring that same experience to Irish and international tourists to the Burren? But what product?

With sides of both wild and organically farmed oak-smoked Burren Smokehouse salmon now being served to visiting royalty and elected heads of state, being shipped in care packages to Irish embassies around the world for a taste of home at the holidays and even presented to the US president (along with the traditional bowl of shamrock) each Saint Patrick’s Day, we now know her answer.

She and Peter began tinkering with kilns and fish in 1987 and by 1989 had opened the smokehouse, with a small visitor centre to give both a literal and figurative taste of the Burren to visitors from around the corner and around the globe.

Few in the Irish food world are unfamiliar with Birgitta from producer events and industry roundtable discussions. Many of the culinary laity will recognise her smiling face as an occasional television guest talking about the joys, merits and importance of quality Irish produce representing our nation on the world stage.

That a fish that meant so very much to the early people of the island, a method of preserving food in times of plenty for the cold winter ahead and a girl from Sweden who says she ‘grew up in Ireland as much as she did in Sweden’ are now synonymous with the place she calls her home speaks volumes about the legacy Birgitta Hedin-Curtin has created where the sea meets the limestone on the west coast of County Clare. Far from the Baltic coast where she was raised, Birgitta found similar joys of foraging, wild game and myriad outdoor activities