The menu: Kinsale Gourmet Festival

The Kinsale Gourmet Festival (October 7 to 9) hits 40 this year and the promised shindig should be a mighty and deservedly celebratory affair indeed for this historical little port and fishing town spent many years to the very forefront of Irish food and in recent times has been doing much to regain its masticatory mojo.

Hosted by the ten member restaurants of the Kinsale Good Food Circle, it kicks off with a champagne reception and a Taste of West Cork black tie dinner in Acton’s.

The bacchanalian boisterousness of the fancy dress Mad Hatter’s Taste of Kinsale, a day-long tour of Kinsale, sipping and sampling for the entirety of the day, is not for the faint-hearted, but like climbing Everest or sailing the Atlantic singlehanded, is the class of epicurean endeavor that should be on every right-thinking Gael’s adventure sports bucket list.