The menu: Foodie events around the country
FESTIVAL OF FOOD
Having just passed a splendid weekend at the Burren Slow Food Festival, The Menu is of a mind to do as many of the Burren Food Trail producers will do and head to Virginia, Co Meath, for the 8th Sheridans’ Food Festival (May 28), where they have formed an alliance with fellow food trail producers from the Boyne Valley.
That is, however, but a single element of one of the most splendid annual Irish food gatherings where Irish primary producers, many of them micro-producers, are very much to the fore, with over 100 of Ireland’s finest setting up stall at Sheridans’ cheesemongers HQ and serving up a strictly-enforced Irish produce only rule.
Catering for children is no mere afterthought and though there will be the ubiquitous bouncy castle, there is a lot more again, including child-centric food demos and workshops which will see the bairns making cheese, sausages, bread and butter as well as encountering the animals responsible for so much of our food.
Parents and other less-encumbered adults won’t be left out either with workshops, demos, live jazz and sufficient hot food to supply breakfast, dinner and tea for all.
(€5 per car, entry free www.sheridans.ie/sheridans-annual-irish-food-festival)
RAISE YOUR GLASSES
The Killarney Beer Festival (May 26-28) includes brewing demos, tastings and masterclasses and an opportunity to meet many of the fine brewers, cidermakers and distillers setting up shop for the weekend offering myriad choices for those with a thirst and a bit of rumbly in the tumbly.
(www.inec.ie/festival/killarney-beerfest/)
The small but perfectly formed Ballycotton Seafood & Shanty committee have come together to produce a fine little booklet detailing the myriad tourism treasures to be found in the vicinity of the delightful little East Cork fishing village, not least some very splendid dining opportunities, including The Bayview Hotel, Pier 26, The Field Kitchen at The Blackbird and the very wonderful Skinny’s Diner.
(www.ballycotton.ie)
SUMMER MENUS
The next time The Menu heads west he shall be checking out Galway’s stately townhouse Hotel Meyrick who have recently cast open windows and hauled out new summer menus offering some wonderfully tasty options with a strong emphasis on local seafood (www.hotelmeyrick.ie) while the Limerick Strand host a masterclass (May 24) of Glendalough Irish Whiskeys (includes fingerfood and tastings), kickstarting a new tasting series in the Terrace Café (www.strandlimerick.ie)
TODAY’S SPECIAL
Dear Old Father Menu (DOFM) spent serval post-war years tramping around South East Asia, along the way acquiring some especially exotic tastes and during the early years of The Menu’s childhood abroad, before the Great Migration back to the Oul’ Sod, the sweet-toothed DOFM was forever returning home of an evening bearing some highly intriguing sweetmeat, spice or fruit to titillate the palates of his multiple offspring.
Said offspring, however, were more akin to locusts than humans when it came to putting on the nosebag and many’s the night The Menu recalls DOFM procuring barely a sniff of his latest prize as he selflessly surrendered the entirety to the mewling mob.
Such evenings very much came to mind when The Menu recently returned with the very first of Dave Bushby’s new season strawberries, from Rosscarbery.
Not having had the foresight to purchase an extra punnet to scoff down on the way home, he sat and watched as his own dear progeny left him nothing but one half of one single strawberry.
A tiny morsel, true, but sufficient to remind him why he scorns out-of-season imports the rest of the year round and waits for the advent of the Irish strawberry season.
(www.facebook.com/Bushby’sRosscarberyStrawberries)
