Menu: Raising a glass to Waterford; Irish Food & Drink Month
The range of fine Irish beverages signed up for the Irish Food & Drink Month, creating unique food and drink pairings in Irish restaurants, cafes, hotels and bars throughout October
The inaugural Sommit (October 11 & 12) wine-driven event taking place in Waterford city, includes a splendid lineup of Irish and international wine, food and hospitality professionals.
It is yet another example of a progression in recent times that The Menu believes will lead to Waterford eventually becoming one of the most vital food destinations in the country, as a city he has long held a special grá for finally unites disparate culinary strands into a cohesive and especially alluring proposition befitting a town with a storied history in food and wine that stretches back through centuries.
Though the hospitality sector is beset by enormous challenges from all sides, the Irish wine world has never appeared so vibrant, and Sommit is set to add to that vinified momentum with a series of workshops, panel discussions and a dinner in a very splendid new addition to the Deise dining portfolio, Union Wine Bar & Kitchen, helmed by Morgan VanderKamer and her partner chef Stephen McArdle.
Morgan is the current Irish Food & Wine Awards Sommelier of the Year and also president of the Irish Guild of Sommeliers so it is no surprise to find her also driving Sommit, with events taking place in the august cellars of the Waterford Wine Museum. In addition, legendary South African winemaker Ken Forrester turns up as a special guest.
Though targeted specifically at industry professionals, there may well be one or two spaces available for ‘civilians’ considering an entry into hospitality.
Further info on the Irish Food & Drink Month, running nationwide through October in bars, hotels and restaurants in Ireland and pairing Irish food with Irish beverages, with an overall winner voted for by the general public.
Killer combos already emerging on The Menu’s doorstep include: a real Menu favourite, Pilgrim’s, in Rosscarbery, with Hedgerow jelly, brown butter mousse, crab apple granita, buckwheat crumble, bay oil, paired with chilled Kilahora Orchards Pom’o, a quite superb beverage made just outside Cork city; Casey’s of Baltimore, keep it simple yet classic with Stonewell Dry Irish Cider with Roaring Bay Mussels; while Rare 1784, in Kinsale, matches Wild Irish Game Wicklow venison, on parsnip purée, with local libation, Kinsale Mead Company’s Wild Berry Red Mead jus & poached pear.
Sadly The Menu finds himself writing yet another elegy to departing favourite local restaurant and it pains him enormously to say farewell to Iyer’s Cafe, on Pope’s Quay.
Gautham Iyer’s tiny little nook punched way above its stature, thanks in no small part to the invigorating powers of his fine fiery South Indian fare but after close to a decade manning the kitchen entirely on his own for up to 70 hours a week, Gautham and family are stepping back from the wonderful little restaurant, a local treasure that had built up deserved national renown, to take a well-earned break.
If there is any small hope to be derived from the news, it is the fact that the closure is announced as a ‘pause’ rather than a more final farewell so The Menu has fingers crossed for the future.
The Menu has been greatly enjoying some new teas from The Lismore Food Company.
A nutty, malty Irish Breakfast Tea is precisely the kind of kickstart he requires in the wake of any celebratory nocturnal antics that leave the body requiring TLC and copious pots of loose leaf tea, and an Earl Grey is The Menu’s preferred choice when he passes the point in the day after which he no longer drinks coffee.
With crisp citric and bergamot flavours, it is a most elegant little sipper, not least with some Lismore lemon polenta biscuits, but what has proven especially popular Chez Menu is the Peppermint Infusion.
The Menu and Daughter Menu are both keen film fans and like nothing better than sitting down to a post-prandial movie on more than a few nights of the week sipping a cup of the aforementioned Peppermint tea, sweetened with a spoonful of local honey.
So taken are they with this new beverage, the mint profile, full bodied and spanning the spectrum, and a clean sweet lift in the finish, that it was duly dispatched to The Menu’s lab, where he and Daughter Menu created an iced peppermint infusion tea, sweetened by a peppermint infusion tea syrup, which needless to say, has myriad other applications, not least in the vicinity of The Menu’s cocktail cabinet.
