The Menu: Cork's Pigalle, Gourmet Galway, and kombucha to suit ya
Enjoy the lovely view of Westport and its gorgeous surrounds from La Fougere restaurant, at Knockranny House Hotel as part of a special foraging weekend package
It appears that Cork restaurant, Pigalle Bar & Kitchen, is determined to keep The Menu — one of their greatest fans — from ever again putting on the nosebag in this fine Barrack St-based feeding emporium as their latest ridiculously generous offer will surely see them booked out ’til the turn of the next century. Having added Sunday openings to the weekly timetable (Wed to Sun, 1st sitting 6pm; 2nd, 8pm), PBK are offering a two-course special (first sitting only) of chef Mark Ahern’s sumptuous fare for two people at just €30 per person PLUS a free bottle of wine. The Menu is considering heading there solo and ordering four courses all for himself! pigallebarandkitchen.com
The Menu’s old comrade, Kevin O’Toole, formerly chef/proprietor of the late, lamented Chameleon, in Dublin, along with partner Carol, and 2019 McKennas’ Guides Irish chef of the year, who, having foresworn the dishing up of nosebag for the foreseeable, has instead taken to dishing out knowledge of a culinary nature and fetches up for a series of cookery classes at the newly opened Firecastle in Kildare, a cafe/restaurant with accommodation, deli food store and cookery school attached. Upcoming classes include: gluten-free; street food; curries of the world; How to be more host and less cook at dinner parties; Super sides me; pizza night; and bao & Korean BBQ.
The great gourmet town of Galway is receiving its very own dedicated food guide: The Galway Food Tours Guide Book, from the award-winning group that has been introducing people to the culinary charms of the City of Tribes for more than five years. Sheena Dignam and Gosia Letowska’s little tome details the fine local produce, grocery stores, restaurants, cafes and bars encountered on their tour, all providing the inside track on the finest local eating, drinking, food shopping and food tourism.Â
Should you be homebound but partial to a spot of nosebag from the same neck of the woods, Michelin starred Aniar Restaurant (remaining closed for the rest of this season) is offering to instead visit you in the comfort of your own home. Available as a nationwide package, Aniar chef/proprietor JP McMahon will fetch up chez vous to create recipes from his recent The Irish Cookbook, for up to six adults, with a demo and tasting of up to five dishes, with the additional option of adding the Aniar sommelier to boot. Granted, it will take more than the confirmation money alone to cover this (the team’s travel expenses kick in beyond a 10km radius of Galway) but it could very well be the ticket for a very special celebration for the
Covid housebound. Enquiries: food@aniarrestaurant.ie
Having just recently passed a wonderful couple of nights at this old favourite, The Menu can recommend the Foraging weekend (Oct 9/10) at Knockranny House Hotel & Spa, to celebrate autumn’s arrival with a guided foraging session led by Will Williams, of Walk on the Wildside, in the Old Head Woods, where The Menu and Mrs Menu recently braved force nine gales. The package also includes a cooking demonstration, wine tastings and a tasting menu on one evening, along with two nights' B&B in the Westport-based hotel.
With the passage of time, it becomes increasingly obvious that, as the old bumper sticker had it, ‘the hippies were right all along’, so much of what was once counterculture is now mainstream: ecological awareness and sustainability; vegetarianism; organic agriculture; yoga, meditation, alternative health practices, including cannabis oil. The list goes on.
At about quarter past the dawn of time, when The Menu was but a bairn and ‘hippy’ was still an insult, he was well acquainted with a wise elder lemon, as long in tooth as he was in hair, and with a blessedly free and exploratory attitude to life, including matters culinary. The neophyte and ever-hungry Menu was an especially eager pupil, keen to make new culinary discoveries. However the day he ‘helpfully’ poured down the drain some ‘gone off’ concoction he’d found lurking in his guru’s fridge was the day he first ever heard mention of kombucha and learned that the malevolent-looking jelly-like disc floating within was actually a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), used to trigger the process of turning tea and sugar into what he would subsequently learn is as a truly life-affirming drink with huge nutritional potency (not least for gut health). He also learned that hippies weren’t necessarily always about peace and love, especially when their preciously nurtured nectar is destroyed but forgiveness arrived in the fullness of time and with the procurement of another SCOBY.
These days kombucha is so mainstream, it is actually part of the PepsiCo portfolio in the US — an evolution which would have left The Menu’s erstwhile guru a tad conflicted were he still around, most especially as kombucha is not really suited to mass production, better when brewed in smaller batches as practiced by Galway-based All About Kombucha.
All About Kombucha — which operates with a commendable ethos of social responsibility about their business practices — offer a range of wonderfully carbonated Kombuchas, which make for an impossibly fresh, crisp and thirst-quenching beverage. Ginger and Lemon carries a warming sting; Turmeric, an earthy warmth; but best of all, The Menu loved the suggestion of perky tart fruity sweetness from each sparkling mouthful of Raspberry flavour, subsequently pairing it with Orchard Dairy cow’s milk kefir to make a delicious and healing Bircher of homemade muesli — a fermented tribute, perhaps, to his former guru whose time has well and truly come even if he himself is now gone to the great ashram in the sky.Â
