🌞 Summer 2026 🌞 Park Hotel Kenmare x Chateau La Coste
Soul, essence and atmosphere in County Kerry.
Out on the lawn in front of the Park Hotel, in Kenmare in County Kerry, there is a sculpture by the Irish artist Michael Craig-Martin. It is called Gate (white), and Craig-Martin has written that: “I am especially pleased that my sculpture of a Gate has found a home in the exquisite landscape of my homeland. Like every Irishman living elsewhere in the world, part of me never left, and never will. This Gate is my testament.” Craig-Martin opened the gate and departed, save for the part of him that never left.
You might ask what a large art installation in powder-coated steel is doing sitting on the hotel lawn of a luxury destination in south-west Ireland, and it’s a good question. Ever since Bryan and Tara Meehan and their family took charge of the hotel, they have been installing a series of contemporary art works which reflect their “ethos, values and philosophy.” The works unify the art of the hotelier with the art of the hotel.
The Meehans came to hospitality as outsiders, blow-ins to an industry normally populated by lifers. Their alternative perspective has worked wonders on the Park, superannuating this Victorian redoubt into a destination offering what we might call provocative luxury, such a sense of luxury being both “experiential and ethical” in the words of the stylist and writer Orla Neligan. Significantly, the lobby is book-ended by two magnificent works by the artist Theaster Gates: Triple Stripe adorns the wall at the reception desk, whilst Withered Historical record with Content is hung alongside the first flight of stairs. You just don’t expect these totemic works to be here. But here they are.
If you want to understand how the Meehans came to make significant mountains of moolah in the business world, just look at how they curate the tea and coffee station in the rooms. The coffee station is always a rush to cliche, but here it is a luxe event, with Blue Bottle coffee cups, a Fellow kettle, homemade crackers and Irish farmhouse cheeses and just-baked cookies. The cliche is turned on its head because the outsiders have thought deeply about how to make it different, and better.
Park Hotel is not the only significant destination doing this, of course. We were guests of the hotel not merely to enjoy the art and the soulful cooking of chef James O’Sullivan, but also to enjoy the cultural partnership the hotel has forged with Paddy McKillen’s Château La Coste, the resort in Provence which unifies several restaurants and a pair of hotels with a world-renowned art collection. La Coste also makes some really excellent wines, which were presented during dinner by the the estate’s winemaker, Paul Guillouard.
James O’Sullivan’s cooking has found its own voice during the last two years, and his cooking is now a personal, confident cuisine that creates what is amongst the most enjoyable food in the country. He will torch a tranche of mackerel to serve alongside local Fenit crab. The Kerry hill lamb is reared by Peter O’Sullivan and is served both as slices of the rump and as a demon lamb sausage. This is sincere, respectful cooking, with plenty of room for fun: O’Sullivan wanted a machine to make soft-serve for dessert – because, of course, soft-serve – and happily persuaded manager Grace O’Connor that a soft-serve machine is well nigh indispensable.
Winemaker Paul Guillouard oversees a stable of a dozen different wines at the estate, unified by biodynamic production methods. “Lots of bio-diversity, no chemicals, no fertilisers” he says. The results are wines of considerable charm and typicity, in particular the rose wines, which Guillouard says are perhaps the best expressions of the estate’s terroir across 125 hectares of vineyards.
Both La Coste and Park Hotel share the air of being democratic spaces, despite the 5-star status. Our Editor Eamon Barrett had a week in Provence and noted that: “Despite the high hotel room prices in Villa La Coste, the overall property remains open to all with a variety of restaurants at affordable prices and a truly sensational ‘art park’ with exquisite sculptures and ‘folies’ by some of the worlds greatest architects and artists. I would add the staff were all amazingly friendly throughout the entire estate.”
You don’t get to provide an experience like Park Hotel without attending to every single detail. The breakfast menu, for instance, occupies two entire pages, with the traditional breakfast offering two types of Irish pudding – Sneem black pudding from Kerry and Caherbeg white pudding from West Cork, both of them exemplars of the art. The sausages are made by the Dempsey family on the Beara Peninsula using their own Tamworth pigs, and we have never seen them anywhere else. And – of course – there is great coffee.
The designer Roisin Lafferty has described luxury as an experience that offers “soul, essence and atmosphere.” After two years of the Meehan family’s stewardship, Park Hotel ticks those boxes with ardour. This is a world-class destination: soulful, successfully marrying the essence of its long history with great contemporary art, and delivering cocoon-like atmospheres at every turn. When the breakfast room is bathed in the bright light of a Kerry morning, you simply don’t want to get up and leave the table.
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