Former taoiseach Charles J Haughey, former Irish football manager Jack Charlton, actors Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan, British MP Clement Freud all had one taste in common – fresh oysters with a squeeze of lemon and crumbly brown bread in Moran's on the Weir.
The thatched cottage with an international name was once a bar that slaked the thirst of farmers who came to take delivery of peat and seaweed fertiliser landed from Connemara by Galway hookers. The first liquor licence was held by Daniel Moran who opened up the pub on the banks of the Dunkellin river in the 1760s.
Located close to south Galway’s native oyster beds, the pub didn’t begin making a business of seafood until the mid 1960s – just over a decade after the Galway oyster festival had been founded, with its nucleus then in Paddy Burke’s bar in nearby Clarinbridge. Gay Byrne’s brother, Al, is said to have put Moran’s on the map when he was working as a sales representative for Guinness. He suggested holding a Guinness party in Moran’s during the oyster festival of 1966.
World record
Willie Moran
set a world record for oyster opening at the 1978 festival, as the restaurant began to build its reputation on the aphrodisiac qualities of the flat oyster.
Located close to the river and the Atlantic beyond, the venue has inspired many a visitor to wax lyrical, not least the late Seamus Heaney who wrote about "laying down a perfect memory" in the "cool of thatch and crockery" in his poem, Oysters.
