Dunluce Lodge, Portrush – Review
By Kevin Pilley, April 2025
The compiler of the first English dictionary isn’t quoted very often anymore. When a Samuel Johnson line is used, it’s usually by those about to go to, or just returned from, Northern Ireland. The “Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see” one about the Giant’s Causeway. His answer would be different now. For three reasons.
Because it now takes two hours to get there by EasyJet and car up to Co. Antrim – not twelve days or so by horse and boat. Because it has the most experienced and interesting guides in Ireland, and because there is now the Dunluce Lodge to stay at. If the original travel influencer Johnson had lodged there, he would have added to his extensive life of quotable quotes with something like: “The breakfast is worth it alone.”
The service at Northern Ireland’s newest five-star luxury hotel, the 35-suite Dunluce Lodge on the fourth fairway of the £400-a-round Royal Portrush Golf Club – which hosts the 153rd Open Championship (13–20 July) – is impressive. They rang me several days before I arrived and asked me – as they doubtless will Rory McIlroy, who will be based there for the week – what I wanted to drink on my arrival. Prosecco, Long Meadow Farm apple juice or Magheramorne spring water? Sadly, Guinness was not mentioned.
They also asked if I had a specific time in mind for my turndown service and delivery of my complimentary night-time Chocolate Manor, Coleraine chocolate bar.
The working team at Dunluce Lodge
“Open field”
American-owned, Dunluce Lodge, an hour’s drive north of Belfast, has an American country club feel to it. It is decorated with specially commissioned paintings by Irish artists such as Barry McGowan and Gerald Mullen. You are surrounded by raging storms, rain-lashed cliffs, sunsets, sunrises, linksland golf landscapes, long strands, and the friendliest and happiest staff imaginable.
Bubbly waitress Carla gave me a lesson in early morning Irish cuisine. Apparently, the difference between a traditional Ulster Fry breakfast and an All-Irish, as served in the Lodge’s Bailiu (“Gathering” in Gaelic) Restaurant, is baked beans.
Although heavy on black and white pudding, an All-Irish doesn’t have them. An Ulster one does. Carla also told me how to make Irish porridge: “Just tip some Bushmills in.”
You learn a lot of important things at Dunluce. Not just at breakfast. You learn how to distinguish between a ghost and an American.
On a tour along the Causeway Coast, Simon, my “Landmark Luxury” guide, pointed with his blackthorn at a woman standing on a clifftop. She wore a billowing white dress. Simon quickly explained that she was on an “elopement package”, available to those who prefer to get married in an open field rather than in a church, and to those brides who prefer, for the photos, to stand beside an old ruin rather than a handsome best man or pretty bridesmaids.
On the Giant’s Causeway
“Lover from the high seas”
Knowledgeable Simon confirmed the woman wasn’t the ectoplasm of the long-dead Lady of Dunluce waiting for the return of her lover from the high seas. She was just someone waiting for a humanist celebrant.
Having your own private Co. Antrim “Seanchai” is a must. Simon is a proud storyteller and keeper of local lore, and his jokes are as old as the Giant’s Causeway itself. He will give you a whisky-tasting on the iconic honeycomb geological formation, take you to the famous rope bridge, the nearby 400-year-old Bushmills Distillery, to see the Game of Thrones locations, and fill you with facts like Dunluce was the first castle to have a cannon, and Co. Antrim was the only place attacked by a German U-boat.
He does a pretty convincing Finn McCool the Giant too – and will even advise on souvenirs: “A slab of 60-million-year-old basalt is good protection against cannon fire.”
And, if he senses you are bored with all the myths and history and need entertaining, he will sing ‘Caroline’ or ‘Whatever You Want’. He is the lead singer of a local Status Quo tribute band.
Lounge
“Does wonders”
He will tip you the wink about must-do activities around Portrush, such as having a coffee in Portrush’s Shanty Old Boathouse and enjoying an oyster flake from Mr Whippy while strolling White Rocks Beach, the East and West Strands, the dolerites and mudstone outcrops over to Ramore Head.
West Bay’s prevailing swell is chilly for some and gnarly for others. You can enrol at Portrush Surf School and get wiped out on a Troggs board. Then have a pint or two of the Black Stuff at the Harbour Bar.
The town is a bracing hour’s walk there and back along the beach from the Lodge – longer, depending on how long you paddle. The hotel doesn’t have a swimming pool.
Whatever you get up to, your appetite will be built up. Dunluce Lodge’s former Rick Stein apprentice and Executive Chef at the Lough Erne Resort, Stephen Holland, offers smoked Lough Neagh eel with seared scallops, Glenarm North Coast salmon, venison from County Tyrone, halibut with crayfish sauce, flax-fed sirloin steak with garlic and ginger sautéed spinach, Co. Fermanagh mushrooms, Bridal Gold butter, the hotel’s signature Baked Alaska, spiced plum and pistachio tart, stout and treacle soda bread, and artisanal Ballylisk cheese of Armagh.
In the spa, Jessica does wonders for your skin matrix quality, taxed calves, stressed hamstrings and wind-swept scalp, leaving you glowing with Co. Kerry Seabody products. The only non-Irish things I came across at the hotel were the Spanish bathroom toiletries and German Ellies tea.
Restaurant
“Surprises”
But the hospitality is 24/7, 100% Irish. So exemplary – and will only get better.
Over a Calamity Corner dirty martini – named after the famous par-three 16th – I asked Pierce the barman whom he fancied for The Open. “My heart is with Rory or Shane,” he said.
“But I think Brooks Koepka and Jake Knapp have a chance.”
Groundsman and curator of the hotel’s putting green – and former chef – Glenn picked Tommy Fleetwood. Gerard, the wilfully neurodivergent doorman, thinks Tony Jacklin.
Ireland always surprises – and endears.
Johnson wouldn’t have dreaded the trip home. He may not even have wanted to go home. He was one for the craic. Although I don’t think he would have been great off the tee.
Useful links:
dunlucelodge.com
easyjet.com
discovernorthernireland.com
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and the ex-chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, lifestyle and food & drink work appears worldwide. He has been published by over 600 titles. Allegedly.
