Moran's Oyster Cottage

Just south of Galway, Ireland, on a weir beside a creek that runs into Galway Bay, this 18th-century tavern-all burnished wood and thatch-was immortalized in the Seamus Heaney poem "Oysters":
Our shells clacked on the plates
My tongue was a filling estuary
Moran's feels like some family's rowdy, boozy reunion. And its Irish Rocks are fabulous: the outer shells fuzzy with sea moss; the inner nacre a blinding white; the meat resembling (and even tasting like) delicately grilled eggplant. Afterward you can stroll beside the creek to the beds where the oysters were raised.