The Menu: predictions for the food world in 2022
Cork is currently surfing a wave of creativity, talent and innovation in the kitchen.
This first column of January is usually when Mystic Menu takes out his edible crystal ball to predict the future of the food world for the year ahead, an increasingly challenging task as Covid still stalks the globe, continuing to play especial havoc with the hospitality sector.
Last January, he predicted that the overwhelming response to Covid from the general public, who flocked in their droves to support premium Irish food producers, especially those small scale producers embedded in our local communities, would increasingly become a lifetime shopping habit for Irish food consumers, and he has seen nothing in the last 12 months to contradict this notion.
He also noted that those restaurants and hospitality enterprises that embraced innovation and change as a necessary response to the challenges of the pandemic would fare best and that too has proven to be the case, with many now also producing products for the retail shelves to supplement their in-house offerings.
The Menu predicts a big year ahead for Kristin Jensen, Ireland’s most respected cookbook editor, who last year launched a kickstarter campaign to raise capital to start her own food publishing imprint, Blasta Books.
However, as an editor with over two decades of experience, she knows full well the logistical difficulties and cost involved in bringing the traditional cookbook (usually 250+ pages) to market, meaning opportunities to get published are very limited.
Wanting to focus on inadequately represented voices and areas of Irish food culture, Kristin settled on an alternative format: bright, almost pop-art design, A5 size, 72 pages, 30 recipes, no fillers; each release, part of a series, that Irish readers might purchase each one to build a colourful collection on the bookshelves.
The first, Taco, by Lily Ramirez-Foran, of Picado Mexican, in Dublin, shares Lily’s passion for, and knowledge of, Mexican food, as she provides the authentic flavours of Mexico, from real corn tortillas to smoky chillies, matched with the best of Irish produce.
It’s been a long time in the ‘remaking’, beset by building delays and then the impact of the pandemic but it looks as if the luxurious five-star Cashel Palace Hotel, in Co Tipperary, will finally reopen for business on March 1 after an enormous re-construction project bankrolled by JP Magnier. It will be managed by that legend of Irish hospitality, the much-loved Adriaan Bartels, who oversaw the launches of both Sheen Falls and The Cliff House at Ardmore, also ensuring their in-house restaurants earned Michelin stars.
Bartels and chef Stephen Hayes (who has been running the kitchen at the attached Mikey Ryan’s gastropub next door) both insist Michelin is not in their plans for the CP kitchens but The Menu reckons what promises to be one of Ireland’s most salubrious hotels is set to make a huge splash, at home and abroad, and will be serving up some very excellent food indeed.
A recent trip to Limerick properly introduced The Menu to The Salt Project food truck owned and operated by Caomhán de Brí, a young chef with substantial experience already under his belt including time in Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin starred restaurant, Maze, five years as Head Development Chef for catering firm, ISS, in Dublin, and several months working alongside Kwanghi Chan to help Chan launch his Asian street food truck, Bites by Kwanghi, featured on RTÉ’s Battle of the Food Trucks.
The Menu’s single sampling of delicious Gubbeen chorizo potato croquettes and free-range Irish roast chicken steamed dumplings were more than enough to mark Caomhán out as a chef to watch and when he finally gets his trailer off the road and settles in his gloriously sited new bricks and mortar venue, The Salt Project, in Co Sligo, later this year, offering fine food, boutique accommodation, a wellness centre and some sumptuous views, The Menu reckons we will be witnessing the birth of a highly promising new addition to the Irish portfolio in the West.
Covid’s impact on the hospitality industry has had a very obvious knock-on impact on the workings of the esteemed Michelin Guide.
The Menu would not be surprised to find several Cork restaurants in the reckoning for the city and county is currently surfing a wave of creativity, talent and innovation in the kitchen, and names to watch out for include: The Glass Curtain in Cork city, Cush in Ballycotton, Dunmore House Hotel outside Clonakilty and Sage Midleton, under new head chef Darren Kennedy, although the latter has only just begun his tenure in the East Cork kitchen, having previously headed up the very wonderful St Francis Provisions, in Kinsale.
We are far from out of the woods, however, and 2022 could prove very harrowing for the hospitality as the fiscal reality of the pandemic hits home, most especially when State supports are entirely removed. There will be closures and businesses will be lost so it well behoves us all to do our best to continue to support the sector in bad times, just as they once provided us with some of our finest social settings in better times of yore.
Last year, Mystic Menu’s most fervent prediction for 2021 — when the upcoming vaccine appeared to promise total liberation — was for us all to be able to enjoy unfettered and unmasked company of family and friends for a wild New Year’s Eve knees-up. Older and wiser, we now know different and restrictions still prevail but it’s not as bad as last year so enjoy your smaller, safer gatherings and raise a glass to a brighter future.
