The Menu: GIY investment and a new farm shop in Cork among latest food news
GIY CEO, Mick Kelly, and Director of Business Development, Karen O’Donohue, at GROW HQ, celebrating the announcement of Rethink Ireland’s Growth Fund investment.
Rethink Ireland, the national organisation supporting innovative charities, social enterprises and community organisations with grants and business supports, has announced a €1.27m, multi-year investment in the social enterprise GIY (Grow-It-Yourself).
It's through their Growth Fund initiative, backing the Waterford-based organisation’s mission to transform attitudes and behaviour around food in Ireland and beyond, which chimes with Rethink’s strategy to support the most scalable social enterprises in Ireland to build a more sustainable society and just economy.
With every euro raised by GIY through philanthropy being matched by the Irish Government via the Dormant Accounts Fund, it enables GIY to work towards changing attitudes towards purchasing and eating as 60% of Irish adults have been designated as overweight or obese and 30% of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.
At the core of the GIY ethos is enabling people to grow at least some of their own food which will in turn have a profound impact on diet, what GIY CEO Mick Kelly calls, ‘food empathy’. Says Kelly: “By reconnecting people with where food comes from, we see dramatic shifts in purchasing and eating behaviours.
"Our research shows us that food growers are more than twice as likely than the average person to eat a predominantly local diet and over 50% more likely to have a plant-based diet. There is also a marked increase in these behaviours among experienced growers compared to beginners.”
On foot of the Covid-19 outbreak, GIY’s online course, How Food Grows, is available to access for free and GROWBox discounts are available for companies interested in using food growing as an employee well-being activity during the transition to remote working.
The new HSE guidelines have foisted many changes upon the hospitality sector and Michelin-starred Liath, in Dublin, was no different, with chef/proprietor Damien Grey forced to cut dining numbers, switching to a single seating per evening, maximum 12 guests, investing heavily in making an entirely safe space for diners, with a sublimely stylish approach to infrastructural changes as well as installing state-of-the-art air purification units.
A global leader during lockdown with his highly innovative ‘dining out at home’ menus, Grey is now inviting returning diners to join him for an entire evening, offering a superb tasting menu with matching wines and drinks (wines, teas and coffees) and all the usual bells and whistles, a most rarified dining experience indeed. Naturally, such an exclusive package has seen a rise in prices, certainly worth it for a big occasion or special experience, but perhaps not the first option should a body be feeling peckish of a mid-week evening.
Accordingly, Grey is delighted to announce a more relaxed early evening three-course dinner experience to whet the appetite for the full shebang. And this is no flimsy little amuse bouche that will have diners heading to the chipper afterwards to plug any lingering gaps in there appetite. Not a bit of it, this is a full-on ‘dinner’, bread course, starter, mains, side orders and desserts, at just €55pp, some of the very best value to be had in Michelin dining anywhere in the world.
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Local favourites, Jacques, a longtime supporter of local, seasonal produce on their menus, have simplified matters and condensed their bar and restaurant menus into one, making for a delightfully informal approach to the consumption of some very tasty food in most salubrious surroundings, Chipotle & Orange Chicken, Ardsallagh Goats Cheese, Tomato Salsa in a Corn Taco just one of a range of especially summery dishes.
One of the many pleasures to be derived from a visit to The Chocolate Shop, in the English Market, The Menu’s go-to destination when it comes to sourcing finest chocolates, is the time spent drinking in the visual pleasures of some exceedingly stylish packaging and Irish producers are not to be found wanting in this respect.
The Menu is especially partial to the muted elegance of Bean & Goose’s stylish new livery, all produced using recycled materials, but Menu does not live by packaging alone so he wasn’t long in disposing of said packaging and digging into the chocolate itself.
Pineapple and Lavender is a single origin milk chocolate from Ecuador, studded with chunks of dried fruit and a pleasing note of lavender in the aftermath. Keogh’s Honey & Sea Salt Popcorn is then added to the same chocolate along with toasted hazelnut for another combo, this one most popular indeed with The Menu’s popcorn-loving progeny.
Peanut Butter Swirls with Peanut and Sichuan Pepper Praline is allied to a dark Ecuadorean (62%) for a sweet-savoury combo that went wonderfully well with a drop of PX Sherry but The Menu’s favourite of this tasting round had to be a sublimely balanced and nicely understated Arsosala Ethiopia Coffee and Chocolate, featuring another Menu favourite, Cloudpicker coffee with a single origin Ecuadorean cacao bean (62%).
