Menu: Iberian 'travel' with a hamper from Heart of Spain
Grilled chicken from Birdsong in the City’s outdoor Basque-style grill, joining with The Metropole Hotel in hosting a mini-food street market on Harley St.
One most definite benefit of Covid 19 has been the inordinate amount of food trucks and street food offerings springing up around the country.
But, unsurprisingly, quality will vary greatly and one reasonably reliable indicator of a premium product is to seek out those operated by professional chefs who have stepped out of the kitchen and into the horsebox, or whatever contraption is housing their new mobile ‘kitchen-diner’.
One chef won’t really have to travel very far at all — just across the road from his Glass Curtain restaurant, on MacCurtain St, and down Harley's Street, running beside The Metropole Hotel.
This is where Brian Murray plans to launch his new venture, Birdsong in the City, named after a poem by his late brother, Eoin. The newly refurbed Harley's Street, sporting a splendid big mural, courtesy of an inspired City Council public arts scheme, will play host to a mini-food market with picnic tables and umbrellas.
The Metropole has two food trucks: Rebel Taco, offering beef, pork and felafel tacos, and Bevs and Brews, offering coffees, hot drinks and cold-brewed nitro coffee and cold beverages.
Meanwhile, Murray will be rolling out his great big metal Basque-style BBQ & Grill, custom-built for Murray by Kevin Roche, in Fermoy, and Murray will be grilling Irish beef, seafood, Skeaghanore chicken and vegetables from Kilbrack Farm and Horizon Farm.
Dishes will include spicy fish ceviche, grilled cod collars and octopus, BBQ short ribs and smoked peri peri chicken, with of ice cream sandwiches, including Bushby’s raspberries folded through vanilla parfait between white cookies. A pop-up version runs from June 24-27 and again from July 1-4, Thursdays/Fridays, from 4pm, and Saturdays/Sundays, from 2pm.
And as The Menu is very partial to poetry, here is Eoin’s poem, from his book, There is a Mountain, published last year in his memory and to support his memorial scholarship.
A lot of restaurants are turning their back on the home dining offering — a curious choice, to The Menu’s mind as there will always be a captive audience for such a thing, especially including parents of young children struggling to find babysitters in a Covid world. But more than a few will continue what has proven to be a very successful venture hitherto never considered.
Washington Street’s Liberty Grill will continue with their very excellent offering. Greene’s (greenesrestaurant.com), one of the smash hits of the lockdown meal kit scene, are also keeping up with their kits, while The Fish Kitchen in Bantry is modifying its kit without entirely turning off the tap, reverting from a collect and cook model to instead turn out some truly gorgeous looking seafood platters (€70) and seafood picnic boxes (€35)
Reasoning that a good crisp will go with almost anything, then surely that would include some of the finest country house hotels, manor houses, castles and restaurants in Ireland, that make up Ireland’s Blue Book collection.
Keogh’s Farm Crisps and Ireland’s Blue Book are collaborating to offer complimentary breaks for 10 staycationers, choosing from any of the 55 properties in the collection. Simply put your name in the ‘country cap’ to be in a with a chance of winning a luxury break worth between €250 and €1,000.
The Menu’s grá for the very finest of Irish food is well known to one and all and is weekly evident in this very column but that does not mean he is at all parochial, relying equally as he does on supplementing his diet with superb produce from elsewhere around the globe, unavailable on the Oul’ Sod and a hamper from Heart of Spain, a Spanish gourmet food business based in Carrigtwohill, Co Cork, and run by Alex Garotte and his family
Like many other Gaels, The Menu has been itching to stretch his feet and venture further afield and his beloved Spain will always feature high on his list of destinations but it is impossible to tell when exactly that will transpire. So in the meantime, he does as always and travels by belly, and a judicious HoS selection served up in The Menu’s garden was near enough the equivalent of sitting on a terraza high in the Alpujarras.
On the table before us lay a mighty spread, a Hiberno-Iberian alliance of finest fresh Irish produce and gorgeous Spanish imports. We drizzled exquisite and fruity Pago de Valdecuevas EVO, made from arbequina olives, on homemade sourdough, then sprinkled with Achill Island Sea Salt and ate it with jamon herráez, the meat’s fat melting on our tongues. We added the oil and a sweet and tangy Castillan balsamic vinegar to mixed green leaves from Food For Humans.
We ate Spanish tortilla made with Charlotte potatoes from FFH, flavoured with Frank Hederman’s smoked paprika, drizzled over some more of that splendid oil and ate it with sweet, smokey roasted red peppers and slices of sweet, peppery Salchichón cured sausage.
And with a few decent wines from the Castille and Leon regions also available, a short ‘trip’ to Spain will cost you no more than the ticket to Carrigtwohill — or, better still, avail of one of their hampers delivered nationwide.
