The Menu: A look at the year ahead
Reclining on his divan, sporting the hairshirt of contrition (made from the purest mulberry silk, it is the civilised way to embark on New Year’s resolutions and set about atoning for the excesses of Christmas), Mystic Menu once more brings to bear his enormous powers of prescience and looks deep into the future culinary year ahead.
In previous years, The Menu’s predictions have sometimes proven so far ahead of the curve that they are only now coming to pass but much of that is down to the innate caution and conservatism of the native Irish eater who will often only accept change grudgingly and at a glacial pace until one fine day, the floodgates open and whatever is the latest fad is instantly marked down as our nearest and dearest culinary tradition.
Craft beer is a good example: Though Irish craft brewers have been operating since the 1980s, many still believe it is a recent phenomenon that only surfaced alongside beard wax and lumberjack shirts.
So, in all probability, it may be some years before goat becomes a regular fixture on the national dining table but The Menu believes 2017 will be the year that process at least begins.
At last year’s Litfest, Sandy Cole of Broughgammon Farm served up delicious goat empanadas and, in summer, The Menu BBQ-ed some exquisite goat cutlets purchased from butcher Eoin O’Mahoney, in the English Market. And, as Joe Desmond, of Orchard Cottage Dairy Farm, has proven, there already exists a huge market for his delicious goat’s milk. Time for Billy Goat Gruff Stew!
One especially interesting collaboration to look out for in 2017 is Sláint-Chi, between Hong Kong-Irish chef Kwanghi Chan and Chinese-American food writer Mei Chin. Kwanghi Chan is Hong Kong-born but raised since early childhood in Donegal and is as Irish as they come. He became a classically trained chef running the kitchens at Michelin-starred Cliff House under Martijn Kajuiter before heading up Dublin’s Soder & Co, and has represented Ireland at international culinary competitions. Through the Emerald jigs and reels, he found his original Chinese culinary heritage becoming rather submerged in the background.
Mei Chin has lived in Ireland for a number of years and is continually astounded that her Irish friends don’t realise the quality of Chinese food available here — you just have to know where to look for it, generally, off menu.
This venture very much hopes to bridge that gap and The Menu wishes them every success for it will add a further dimension still to the ongoing evolution of Irish food. www.slaintchi.com
Speaking of unusual collaborations, The Menu wishes every success to his fine friend, superb chef Robbie Krawczyk, son of the legendary West Cork charcutier Frank, who has left Tankardstown Castle to begin a new venture in Dublin with a rather leftfield partner.
The Menu will bring more news as in due course.
The Menu continues to fly the flag for Kevin Murphy, chef/proprietor of Idá’s, in delightful Dingle.
His forensic culinary explorations of the produce of his hinterland make for one of the most intriguing menus in the land and hopefully this will be the year the country at large discovers just how good he really is.
The only certainty about 2016 was that it was a year of uncertainties, not least among them, the potential impact of Brexit on the Irish food industry, from the smallest producers to the behemoth agri-biz sector.
Nothing is written in stone but even the notion alone is adding to a nervousness abroad in the Irish food world but rather than sitting there stewing, The Menu hopes to see a proactive response and believes that will be best driven by the citizens themselves as State policy in this area is rather like trying to turn an ocean liner in the Royal Canal.
So, please, do go out and support your own local producer above all others this year.
