howth yacht club restaurant

About us at Aqua

Welcome to Aqua , Howth’s award winning seafood restaurant serving the community for over 15 years. Located at the very end of Howth’s West Pier in a building with a long and apt history,  Aqua has the best seat in town with legendary views across Howth Sound to the island of Ireland’s Eye.

Aqua  uses the best local ingredients in all dishes, a lot of fish served is caught locally and salads and vegetables are sourced  from specially selected local farmers. As well as offering a wide selection of fish and seafood dishes, our menu also includes a great selection of meat and vegetarian dishes including our renowned flame grilled steak.

A little bit of Aqua History

Aqua  opened on December 31st 1999, and since then our mission has been to provide the highest quality seafood dishes to everyone who visits us. Located at the very end of Howth’s West Pier Aqua sits proudly in a building which previously belonged to Howth Sailing Club, which was formed in 1895. The building, as it stands today, did not exist then, so the club rented rooms in the harbour offices (owned by ‘Bord of Works’) and the few small rooms were accessed by an outside wooden stairway.

In 1934, with the adoption of engines in boats, Howth Motor Yacht Club was formed and began operating from rooms in the same building. Fast forward to 1968 and membership of both clubs had grown to the point where the surroundings were cramped, to say the least. Coinciding with the amalgamation of the two clubs into ‘Howth Yacht Club’, the decision was taken to extend the premises into the building you see today and works were completed in 1969.

In 1986, Howth Yacht Club had again outgrown their premises and it was time to move on. Following their departure the building was used for various purposes including fish offices, but by late in the 20th century the building had become dilapidated and in need of intense renovation.

The owners of Aqua restaurant, keen sailors themselves, would often sail past and reminisce about the building. It was during one of these ‘sail pasts’ that a plan was hatched to open a restaurant and restore the building to its former glory. Refurbishments began in 1998 and on millennium night 2000, with a firework lit backdrop, Aqua restaurant served its first meal to a gathering of family and friends. The atmosphere has never changed, a meal in Aqua is an opportunity to gather to celebrate with family and friends all that is good in dining and select company.

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Howth Yacht Club

Location & Hours

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Harbour Road

Republic of Ireland

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One must be a due-paying club member to have free access here; however, a friend of a friend 'hosted' me and I wandered around freely in this really nice yacht club in a gorgeous location. The club has a vast comfortable bar and lounge space with two dining areas for guests to spill into, as well as large windows with beautiful views of the harbor. There are three levels which include some private dining/function spaces and a couple decks for enjoying a bevvie in the sunshine or simply to take in the wild seaside. If you're a sailor, a membership might be worth a consideration. I stuck around to see the crews return and enjoy a 'sailing supper' which smelled mighty good! Ahoy the shore!

See all photos from Gigi L. for Howth Yacht Club

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THE 10 BEST Restaurants in Howth

Restaurants in howth, establishment type, online options, traveler rating, michelin guide, dietary restrictions, restaurant features, neighborhood.

• Beshoffs Bros
• 30 Church Street
• Crabby Jo's
• The Pier House
• The Abbey Tavern
• O'Connell's Howth
• The Brass Monkey
• Il Panorama Café
• Caffe Caira

Restaurant review: Views to dine for at Aqua, Howth

Restaurant overlooking sea serves its own fresh vegetables and succulent seafood.

‘Thank you for dining with us!” say the capital letters on the receipt from Howth restaurant Aqua. And boy have we dined. We are fed to the eyeballs. To the point where I wonder if we could summon the chair lift from the bottom of the curved stairs to glide us down from the glass box overlooking the sea. The meal featured so much butter it would be no surprise if it made its way out through our pores in a golden glisten.

There are two nods to restaurant trends in Aqua, which sits in what used to be Howth Yacht Club at the end of the west pier. The first is the absence of table linens. The mirror polished wooden tables are bare. The second is the freshness of the vegetables. Tonight they're mustardy salad leaves, which come from the kitchen garden, an allotment on Howth Hill. Everything else is so proudly old school it's more old college, on a tipping point towards trendy. "Hipsters would pay a lot for that ceiling," Juliana remarks. It's a prop straight out of Dr No like a huge inverted egg box for square eggs.

The true star here is the room, which gives you so much sea view you feel like you’re on a cruise ship that’s just docked at the pier. It’s got a floor like a ship’s deck with glossy pale timbers and silver and purple velvet curtains (which match the chair upholstery) hanging from a velvet covered pelmet. The Scandi-style lights just add to the look and beyond all that are acres of glass and sea. On the water below there are serious-looking sailing teams motoring back into the harbour. The sun is sinking slowly into the drink.

We kick off with some great sourdough bread, pillowy warm and served with an obviously hand-chopped pesto and the first of the butter rush. So far so great, but then a steamed half lobster is disappointingly cold. When you read steamed on the menu you think hot rather than steamed a while ago and then put into the fridge before being taken out and served. It comes with those fresh leaves and a finely chopped mango and pineapple salsa.

Across the table Castletownbere crab claws are proving crab can trump lobster for flavour and texture, especially served warm. These are thick, soft, thumb-size wedges of sweet crab meat drenched in herb butter and with more of that garden salad.

There’s a medium sized Howth dover sole. They come in three sizes and they were all out of the small. It’s a great piece of fish with a cartoon skeleton that lifts out whole from the buttery fishy innards.

I have a good piece of skin-on hake sitting on a sauce from the school of cheffing that time forgot. There are more of those luscious crab claws on top of my hake; but the sauce! Oh my the sauce. It’s a brandy bisque reduced past the point of irony to a full on, toque-wearing, moustache-twirling school of French fish cookery, such a chest-thumping piece of cooking it’s like a brass band at a gathering of a silent order. And it’s all just a little too much for the bang up to date, gorgeously fresh fish.

There are great butter-glistening new potatoes, and mangetouts in which the peas have swollen to full-on pea size but the pods are still sweet, helped along by another light slick of butter.

A textbook rendition of rhubarb crumble (always a favourite) and some good ice cream round off a meal that was not cheap. It feels like a dinner that’s been sponsored by Kerrygold, we agree, and that’s not necessarily an insult.

Aqua seems to be set in its ways, as consistent and unchanging as its spectacular sea view. Its website proudly says “the atmosphere has never changed” in its 15- year history. It shows an admirable salty determination, proof that the sun hasn’t set on this kind of restaurant just yet.

Dinner for two with sparkling water, coffee and tea came to €122.70

THE VERDICT: 7/10

Dublin’s best dining room view, good fish and great veg

Aqua, 1 West Pier, Howth, Dublin 13 tel: 01-832 0690 Facilities: Fine Music: None the night we were there Food provenance: The Aqua Garden for salads and “Irish origin” beef, lamb and chicken Wheelchair access: Yes(via chair lift) Vegetarian options: Limited

Second helping...

My friend Sarah Kennedy has two new babies in recent months, one bouncing boy and the other a new cafe in Dublin's Clontarf. Now that she is one of us she's thinking about stressed parents in school holidays. So for the rest of this month kids eat free at lunchtime at Kennedy's Clontarf. But before you screech up with a carload of hungry kids and drop them at the door, every free child has to be with an adult eating a (paid-for) lunch. That adult could be a grandparent, minder or parent. The kids options, which kick off with carrots and colouring, include things like swiss cheese melted on ciabatta or house-made pesto on corkscrew pasta. Drinks and desserts are extra.

Kennedy’s Foodstore 196 Clontarf Road, Dublin 3, 01-8186824

Catherine Cleary

Catherine Cleary, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a founder of Pocket Forests

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Howth Yacht Club

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Best Restaurants in Howth, Ireland

Restaurants in howth, establishment type, online options, traveller rating, michelin guide, dietary restrictions, restaurant features, neighbourhood.

• Beshoffs Bros
• 30 Church Street
• Crabby Jo's
• The Pier House
• The Abbey Tavern
• O'Connell's Howth
• The Brass Monkey
• Il Panorama Café
• Caffe Caira

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Further useful numbers and emails -

Administration:                  01 8322141   [email protected]  

Bar:                                   01 8320606

Catering:                           01 8322141     [email protected]  (during office hours)                              

Marina:                              01 8392777     [email protected]

Results:                             01 8392714    (then dial 224) [email protected]

Membership inquiries:        01 8322141     [email protected]  

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