Menu: Awards night with a twist — and time to grow up with fab GIY seed packs
Nash 19 present a cheese course which includes Mature Gubbeen and Ardsallagh Goats Cheese with Nash 19 Fig Confit for the Cork Business Association President’s Taste of the City “At Home” dinner. Photo: Joleen Cronin
Food boxes for home dining have most certainly been capturing the public imagination but A Taste of the City at Home (April 17) is a candidate for one of the most ambitious such offerings to date. It's a six-courser put together by five executive head chefs in Cork city hotels in a collaboration with the Cork Business Association, creating a home-based ‘dinner party’ for the upcoming Cork Business Association’s (CBA) President’s Dinner and Cork Business of Year Awards.
Claire Nash, proprietor of Nash 19 and CBA Director, is co-ordinating the event, which aims to focus on local produce, featuring the region’s smokers, growers, cheese makers and farmers. The ambitious menu features dishes from chefs Trevor O’Keeffe (Metropole Hotel), Jerome Joyce (Imperial Hotel), Christopher O’Sullivan (The Cork International Hotel), and Tim Daly (The Kingsley), with Nash putting together the cheeseboard.
Breads will be supplied by Alternative Bread Company and there won’t be a dry mouth in the house with three bottles to sup from (Champagne, sponsored by Centra, and red and white wine) and Shelbourne Irish coffee, along with other treats.
The online side will include awards, entertainment and an address from Taoiseach Micheál Martin. ‘Attendees’ are encouraged to dress up for the night, sharing their experiences on Twitter, with prizes for best dressed, best presented meal, and best dressed table.
Dublin diners can also join in with a pick up location also open in Academy Plaza, O’Connell St along with the Imperial Hotel, in Cork city, on April 17.
The event is a key fundraiser for the not-for-profit Cork Business Association and their charity partner Marymount University Hospital & Hospice, with awards and event sponsored by JCD, Centra, Peninsula, and The Irish Examiner as media partner.
The Menu is very excited indeed about a collaboration between two of his most favourite hospitality establishments, L’Atitude 51 and St Francis Provisions, whereby each will serve as an additional collection point for the other’s dining-at-home meal boxes every Friday.
The ever-delicious five-course St Francis Dinner Provisions offering, as well as being available as per usual in Kinsale on Friday and Saturday, can now also be ordered and picked up on a Friday at L’Atitude 51, on Union Quay, in Cork city, with the option of adding wines specially chosen to match your food order from the wine cafe and cave’s extensive and quite superb list.
In turn, the L’Atitude-At-Home box will now be available for citizens of Kinsale, again for Friday collection, with L’At51 proprietor, Beverley Mathews, and her team putting together wines from a specific location with foodstuffs to match, allowing housebound Gaels the opportunity to sampling and pair wine and foods and dishes from specific regions. Recent offerings include ‘tours’ of Austria and Barcelona.
Grow It Forward 2021 is the latest wonderful initiative from GIY in collaboration with Healthy Ireland and Libraries Ireland and aims to furnish seeds and knowledge in an attempt to equip up to half a million people with the opportunity to grow some of their own food this summer.
There was a staggering 350% above average increase in traffic to the GIY website in the 12 months since lockdown began last year, coupled with recent Bord Bia research showing that consumer spending on gardening hit €1.2 billion in 2020, and consumer research recording spending on fruit, herbs and veg as being at the highest level since measurement first began 20 years ago.
This all illustrates an enormous interest throughout the nation in getting back to the land. 50,000 free food growing kits will be given away, with participants asked to use the kits to share the experience with 10 people — enabling half a million people across Ireland to enjoy the wide range of benefits that come from growing food at home.
Each pack includes seeds (beetroot, carrots, salad leaves, peas and tomatoes), a growing guide, and postcards and gift tags for sharing, and there will be regular emails with growing advice and support, instructional videos and advice on sharing in accordance with social distancing guidelines.
One of The Menu’s standout meals of 2019 was a steaming bowl of Bia Rebel ramen noodles eaten al fresco in Levi’s Cornerhouse beer garden in Ballydehob. These were cooked in chef Brian Donnelly’s glorious silver Airstream food truck, which he had driven down from Belfast and parked up to the rear of the West Cork pub for a two-week stint as a popup restaurant.
The Menu wasn’t the only one to relish Donnelly’s sublime take on this strand of Japanese cuisine via finest West Cork produce and Bia Rebel’s return to Levi’s in 2020 provided some brief comfort during the first summer of lockdown. That comfort is now available all year round and anywhere in the country as the Bia Rebel ramen kit is available nationwide, delivered to your door.
Serving up Bia Rebel ramen bowl (miso broth, noodles, charsu pork, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, spring onions) is effortlessly simple, but the resulting dish is sublime. If ordering, do check out their range of condiments, including quite superb soy sauces and chicken salts — the latter, so addictive, The Menu’s No 2 Son has taken to dipping in a finger for a sneaky flavour shot on a far too regular basis.
