Sham Hanifa, Alison Moffatt, and Eileen Gibbons.Irish Stew Podcast
The draw of the “Hidden Heartlands” comes into sharp focus in the final episodes of Irish Stew’s Off the Beaten Craic series, where food, forest, and a little bit of gin-fueled imagination show how a rural region like Co Leitrim can reinvent itself.
From Malaysian-inflected comfort food to woodland retreats and slow adventure tourism, and a former jam factory now humming with innovation, this podcast journey traces how curiosity and community spirit turn a quiet corner of Ireland into a destination.
In Carrick-on-Shannon, cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee meet Malaysian-born chef and restaurateur Sham Hanifa, who arrived in Leitrim at 20, jet-lagged, but ready to work. After a stint at The Landmark Hotel, today he anchors the local dining scene with The Cottage, My Kitchen, and Buffalo Boy, weaving Irish ingredients through the flavors of his Thai-Chinese-Indian-Malay heritage, an approach that has turned his Leitrim restaurants into dining destinations.
From there, the series slows the pace even further at Drumhierny Woodland Hideaway, where eleven self-catering lodges sit lightly in mature woods, inviting guests to swap screens for birdsong and enjoy a sanctuary with seaweed baths, sauna, and cold plunge.
“They arrive stressed on Friday, and when you meet them on Sunday, they’re completely Zen,” says co-founder and marketing manager Alison Moffatt.
You can listen to "Malaysian Chef, Woodland Retreat, E-Bike Ramble" from the Irish Stew Podcast here:
Then it’s off to the Jackalope Trail to explore slow adventure tourism with Eileen Gibbons of Electric Bike Trails, who, with her husband Seamus, offer guided rides that trade speed for story, rolling conversations, jokes, songs, and plenty of photo stops. The Jackalope Trail leads naturally to the final Off the Beaten Craic stop in Drumshanbo.
There, Irish Stew finds a town that has rewritten the rural renewal playbook, turning a shuttered jam factory into The Food Hub, one of Ireland’s most remarkable community-led success stories. Cllr Enda McGloin and manager Fergal McPartland tell how, after years of volunteer effort, The Food Hub now houses multiple culinary enterprises, including The Shed Distillery, whose Gunpowder Irish Gin helped put Drumshanbo on the global spirits map and turned the town into a case study for other communities seeking renewal.
Inside The Shed, founder and managing director P.J. Rigney and his team blend global imagination with local soul in their gins, whiskeys, and now vodka, all wrapped in a storyteller’s sense of character and place, drawing global visitors to its distillery tour and Jackalope Café. Now P.J. is restoring Drumshanbo’s historic Methodist Church as a community and visitor hub, in a partnership of “guardian angels” between business and community, each nurturing the other through shared purpose.
You can listen to "Drumshanbo from Jam to Gin" from the Irish Stew Podcast here:
PJ Rigney, Fergal McPartland, and Enda McGloin.
Together, the closing “Off the Beaten Craic” episodes capture the alchemy that defines the Hidden Heartlands: a blend of hospitality, heritage, and hard graft that turns crisis into creativity. From jam to gin, from quiet forest paths to bustling innovation spaces, Leitrim’s story shows how even the most tucked-away towns can become global destinations when they bet on local talent and collective imagination.
Irish Stew has more travels ahead. Next stop, Washington, DC, for a new series on Irish film from the Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival.
For more information, visit IrishStewPodcast.com. You can listen to "The Irish Stew Podcast" wherever you get your podcasts.