The Menu: The year of Ballyhoura Mushrooms

This time last year, Mystic Menu sat down before his crystal ball and threw out some predictions.

It would be the year of Ballyhoura Mushrooms, he said, and indeed the North Cork-based Mycophagists added to their tally of awards, including an Irish Food Writer’s Guild Award and a Euro-toques Ireland gong, but it was hardly any great act of prescience on his part for their utterly superb homegrown exotic mushrooms were a true game-changer.

So successful was their rise, however, that certain restaurants and retailers, unable to procure Ballyhoura produce, passed off inferior imitations as the real thing, in other words, engaged in food fraud. The Menu hopes, in 2015, this issue is addressed once and for all at a national level with relevant State agencies and the hospitality industry, finally being forced to address their long-neglected responsibilities in this area.