All go for Galway food fest
So, with the 2nd Galway Food Festival taking place over Easter (Mar 28-Apr 1), there no prizes for guessing where The Menu shall be unwrapping his choccie eggs this year. Mind you, chances of him indulging in anything other than the merest of morsels of said eggs are pretty slim with a bewildering programme of events offering numerous opportunities to put on the nosebag, including restaurant trails, tastings, food talks, cooking and baking demos, wine and craft beer workshops and open air food markets.
The demos alone are worth the trip and The Menu will be very keen to see what more Galway’s ‘Mr Food’ and festival head, JP McMahon, and Jess ‘Kai’ Murphy get up to in their Using the Whole Hen demo. Also, a tasting at Sheridan’s Cheesemongers covers whiskey, smoked fish and cheese — three items extremely essential to The Menu’s spiritual wellbeing and corporeal ecstasy. Another highlight from a whole host of stimulating food talks will be The Great Debate — No Such Thing As Cheap Food, something The Menu has been banging on about for many a long moon. The Menu may well leave the Easter eggs back home to be tackled upon his return. galwayfoodfestival.com
On foot of several very wonderful celebrations over the years at Barnabrow Country House, in East Cork, with another to come shortly, The Menu is delighted to announce that their sterling Sunday lunches will soon expand to ‘brunch’ status with chef Stuart Bowes relishing the opportunity to do splendid things with the fine produce on his doorstep. (www.barnabrowhouse.ie) And while The Menu wept copiously when chef Fred Desormeaux departed Cork city to commence ‘gastro-pubbing’ in Fermoy’s Charlie Mac’s, The Menu’s tears abated somewhat after he did some dining there recently and reckons it can’t be too long before the citizens of lovely Fermoy cotton on to the gastronomic treasure now happening on their doorstep.
When The Menu indulges in a little off-hand fantasising about property, he dreams of no chateaux on the Loire or beachside condos in the Caribbean but of a reasonable-sized plastic polytunnel to the rear of his current more modest dwelling. But until such a construction is realised, during these chill months, The Menu more than makes do with some of the extremely fine produce from Derek Hannon’s Green Field Farm, most especially the exquisite mixed salad leaves from his polythene temples of edible excellence. Favoured by many of the smarter chefs around the Cork county, his mix of oriental and native leaves show up the bagged and chlorinated imported supermarket offerings for the dross they truly are and The Menu has lost count of the times he has stunned guests with nothing more than Derek’s leaves, a drizzle of fine oil, a squeeze of lemon and sprinkling of sea salt. www.greenfieldfarm.ie
