Joe McNamee's annual food accolades, The Munchies, return once more, in which he rounds up his food highlights of the year. (Part II next week)

"Many restaurants are full, bookings hard to come by, but diners are no longer spending freely — often making do with two courses, even one instead of the usual three, and the arse is falling out of restaurant wine sales."

"They still treasure the venerable old building and that aforementioned hospitality, but the premises has been streamlined."

"Jess’s ‘fusion’ is different. She may scavenge freely from the global repertoire, recipes and ingredients, but cleaves to a bedrock of the magnificent Irish produce with which she is so besotted."

Anyone with an age in double digits still unable to differentiate between meat and meat alternatives requires protection under an entirely different sort of legislation.

Tracing the evolution of the Irish peasant’s diet over the centuries serves up the grievous impact of Ireland’s colonisation almost literally on a plate.

I first heard of the Cairo 2 Cork food truck upon learning the Egyptian ambassador to Ireland had written to its chef-proprietor Nivene Sadick to congratulate her on being the first to serve Egyptian food in Ireland.

"Sweets really were treats. Bread and jam was as much as you might enjoy during the week until Pops came home on a Friday night with toffees to be thrown to the slavering hordes."

"In my youth we drank dirty black porter but as soon as the sun shone, we switched to cider and if we were lucky enough to hit a heatwave, we drank it until our stomachs groaned.  (The concept of perhaps not drinking was still a novel notion.)"

"As he did in the iconic Liberty pub — just around the corner — with Resistance, a speakeasy cocktail bar on the first floor, Soul proprietor Stephen O’Sullivan has once again created a canny visual concept on a tight budget."