Harry’s Shack is a low wooden building on Portstewart Strand on the Causeway Coast, and the Strand is National Trust land, two miles of it. In July 2025 The Times and The Sunday Times named Portstewart the best beach in the whole UK, not just in Northern Ireland, in the 17th edition of their annual guide. Their chief travel writer inspected 756 beaches to arrive at that, and his write-up of this one specifically mentions people sitting out on the cocktail deck at Harry’s.
The building used to be the National Trust information centre. It opened as Harry’s in 2014, run by Donal Doherty, whose family already had a Harry’s over the border at Bridgend in Donegal. The kitchen works off local boats and its own walled garden, so the menu moves with the season. Prawns, whitebait, fish and chips done properly, and a stove inside for the days the Atlantic is being the Atlantic.
It is nearer a restaurant than a bar, and it books out, so plan instead of wandering in. That cocktail deck is the part that earns it a place here. You can drive straight onto the strand and park on the sand, which is free if you are a National Trust member.
