Cork food company wins prestigious award
Run as part of the Dingle Food and Wine Festival, this year’s competition saw more than 1,000 food and drink products entered in 24 categories.
Iain Flynn’s spinach and ricotta cannelloni came out on top.
Flynn’s Kitchens makes and sells a range of products including freshly prepared meals, paté, quiches, mayonnaises, oils, preserves and chutneys, using local and organic ingredients. Flynn makes all the foods himself and the accounts – he’s an economics graduate – and most of the retailing.
Flynn trained in Actons Hotel, Kinsale. “I make about 300 pates per week, 200 ready-made meals, and 200 jams and chutneys,” he said. I make about 100 of the spinach and cannelloni each week at the moment.” Demand for this product is sure to rise after the prestigious award.
He sells at the Kinsale, Mahon Point and Douglas farmers’ markets in Cork. “Kinsale, even though it’s the smallest of the three, is strong for me, as I’m known in the area, having trained there.”
The new Douglas market (where three farmers markets have been consolidated into one) is a great location for food stalls, as is Mahon Point.
The ingredients list of Flynn’s Kitchen foods reads like a who’s who of the county’s top food producers. The winning dish has baby spinach from the Horizon Organic Farm in Kinsale, cream from Clona Dairies, Clonakilty; and the iconic Gabriel cheese from Schull to top it.
Flynn sources bacon from Gubeen, Schull; eggs from Beechwood Farm, Kinsale; and beef from O’Connells, the Lough, in Cork city.
Iain believes it’s important to support local food businesses in these tough economic times.
He also supplies locally to stores such as O’Driscolls of Ballinlough and O’Keeffes in St Lukes in Cork city; Careys Butchers in Bandon; Centra in Crosshaven; Quay Foods, Kinsale; Country Store, Dungarvan; the Alley Bar and McCarthys Butchers in Kanturk, and is also available for catering.
