The Menu: Quay Co-op celebrates 40 years and Street Feast returns

— and the English Market’s start-up stall is once more available for a local budding food entrepreneur

The healing shall begin in earnest with the return of the ever-splendid Street Feast community project, bringing together neighbourhoods for a shared meal. Picture by Shane O'Neill, Coalesce.

Eat on the street

Street Feast is a most commendable community project created by the redoubtable Sam Bishop. It is an annual nationwide day of local lunches organised by and then shared by the citizens of neighbourhoods and communities in which they take place, aided by Street Feast’s provision of their Street Feast Pack for each host when they register, including bunting, invitations, posters, and all the information needed to have a brilliant Street Feast. Street Feast, like so many other public gatherings, had to put its head under the metaphorical covers during Covid-19 but, more than most others, this is an especially welcome return, an opportunity to break bread with neighbours, young and old, in your local community, estate, or road, one of the most profoundly connecting and important of all human practices. Ninety-six per cent of Street Feast participants in 2019 said their sense of belonging to the neighbourhood increased after that feast and 97% said their neighbourhood was friendlier after the event. Registration is open and organisers are aiming for 1,200 feasts with 100,000 people participating around the country on Sunday, June 26.