Highlands Hotel in Glenties

05/10/2024: I've been dying for an excuse to try out The Thatch since it reopened recently, and with 3 friends in town for the fiddle festival what better excuse? The Thatch is a beautiful building, in the beautiful town of Glenties, and the restaurant itself has been very tastefully renovated. On our arrival the downstairs area was at capacity, so we were seated upstairs, which was also quite busy. The menu in The Thatch was fab. I don't eat meat so I was immediately drawn to the fish and vegetarian options, as was my significant other. There certainly was plenty of choice. I opted to have a caesar salad to start and the vegetable risotto with prawns. The salad was lovely, but the risotto was superb. Risotto can be very rich and claggy, but this had a really perfect balance of rice to sauce and the vegetables were perfectly al dente, which, to my mind, is always the sign of a chef that knows their onions. The additional prawns were also plentiful. My wife had the sea bass and our friends the bacon and cabbage and seafood pie. Everything was thoughtfully presented and very tasty even down to the side salad with the sea bass. I often find dessert menus to be quite hit or miss but The Thatch definitely has a hit on their hands. I was torn between 3 or 4 winner desserts, but opted for the poached pear and carrageen moss panna cotta. My wife opted for the cinnamon French toast and butterscotch ice cream. Both desserts were delicious and I'll be giving the poached pear dish a lash at home myself. So a big thanks to all involved at The Thatch for a very pleasant evening. This is a great menu that I could happily return to time and again. And I look forward to doing just that.

03/10/2024: The food is definitely below average. A Caesar salad absolutely swimming in dressing. It bordered on a soup. The pizza we ordered wasn’t homemade. It was a frozen pizza. Looked like what I used to eat in the high school cafeteria 35 years ago. Bland seafood pot pie. Topping it all off is that this was the most money we spent for dinner in the area over seven nights. The place itself looks nice. It’s a pleasant spot to spend an hour. The kids working there are nice enough. But the food is really subpar. I read here that the restaurant is under new ownership. I sincerely wish them well. I hope they can make some changes, because as of right now it’s thoroughly underwhelming.