The Menu: Looking forward to Me Auld Flower festival

Plus: a trip to Dublin for a look at Russell Street Bakery

Making croissants at Thibault ‘Tartine’ Peigne’s new Russell Street Bakery

With Lá Fhéile Pádraig the next big date in the calendar, The Menu is devoting almost this entire column to what he thinks will be the real highlight of the national programme: The unveiling of the inaugural Me Auld Flower Food & Drink Festival, taking place on March 16-19 in the historic surrounds of the Dublin City Fruit, Veg and Flower Market, on St Michan’s Street, in Smithfield. Helmed by Andy Noonan and his Big Grill organisation, the event arrives armed with impeccable pedigree for the aforementioned summertime BBQ festival has evolved into one of the very best such gatherings in Europe and Me Auld Flower promises to be equally exciting, featuring homegrown food heroes and their international counterparts over four days.

Aishling Moore, flying the flag for Cork at Me Auld Flower Food & Drink Festival. Picture: Clare Keogh

People of note

Talks and demos include Jordan Bailey, who has just shocked the Irish food firmament by announcing his departure along with wife and business partner, Majken Bech-Bailey, from Michelin two-starred Aimsir, in Co Kildare; Northern Irish chef Shauna Froydenlund who was chef-patron along with husband, Mark, at Marcus Wareing’s Michelin-starred Marcus Belgravia; Ben Quinn of Canteen in Cornwall; Dungarvan’s own Paul Flynn; Aishling Moore, from Goldie, in Cork; and Hawksmoor’s Will Beckett, who is soon to open an outpost on College Green, in Dublin. Demos, conversations, and contributions include Catherine Cleary of Pocket Forests; JP McMahon; Jessica Kelly of The Village Butcher; Lily Ramirez-Foran; Nico Reynolds; Seaneen Sullivan of L Mulligan Grocer; Crossy (Thomas Crosse); Erica Drum; Finbar Deery of Sheridans; Graham Herterich; Gubbeen’s Fingal Ferguson; and Holly Dalton.

Food impressario Andy Noonan, on site in Smithfield at the venue for Me Auld Flower Food & Drink Festival

New Irish tapestry

A multi-cultural Ireland is very much reflected with restaurants cooking across all four days ranging from AA’s Caribbean Irish-Trinidadian menu to Bahay’s Filipino-Irish street food, Bites by Kwanghi’s cross-cultural bacon and cabbage dumplings to Bullet’s Chinese-style Irish duck, African-inspired Irish food from Our Table, tacos from Los Chincanos and award-winning Chinese from Big Fan Bao. Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma, Ngozi Elobuike and Anita Nwalo interrogate A Taste of Black Culture in Dublin with Bia! Zine, Eva Pau of Asia Market looks at the trajectory of Irish Chinese food, and Blanca Valencia considers Irish tapas — the good, the bad, and the brilliant.

Big Grill will be heating things up with a live fire cooking area featuring Dublin-born chef and barbecue expert Mark O’Brien who will join forces with Ben Quinn (Canteen, Cornwall) manning a cauldron of Irish stew with slow-cooked local lamb hanging over the fire. Baste BBQ and Rama Basilio from Argentina will produce Irish choripán and asado at the festival. Dublin’s Pitt Bros and John Relihan will be lighting up their famous smokers and the city’s preeminent Turkish-Irish grill masters from Reyna.

Seafood offerings also include King Sitric and Niall Sabongi’s Salty Buoy.

Eat the Head off Ya sees chef Eric Matthews cooking a unique Dublin-focused tasting menu for 24 guests per sitting, up on the private mezzanine floor overlooking the entire market on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Cáis na hÉireann is another ticketed event on the mezzanine floor — a 45-minute whistle-stop tour and tasting of great Irish cheeses with paired Irish drinks for €25 per ticket.

There’s a Coddle Cook-Off competition, an Onion Eating Challenge hosted by comedian Fiona Frawley and Me Auld Flower Walking Tours led by Three Castles Burning’s Donal Fallon, a fringe event open to all, with the proceeds going to the Capuchin Day Centre.

Inside the Market Hall will be almost 50 different and quite superb vendors, producers, and growers providing hot and cold food, and there are guest pouring bars, spirits makers and craft beer brewers. With bookable seated areas and bespoke arrangements for larger groups and corporate guests, it promises to be an exceptional weekend in the Big Smoke.

• www.meauldflower.com

TODAY’S SPECIAL

Way back in the mists of time, or at least January 2015, Keith Bohanna convened a special gathering in Highbank Orchard of a select group of six of Ireland’s finest real bread bakers with The Menu invited along in a special observer capacity and to make the tea. As The Menu has written before, out of this gathering came what he believes to be one of the most important Irish food organisations of all: Real Bread Ireland. 

With Bohanna still driving proceedings as its spiritual leader and now with well over 200 members, it has utterly transformed the offering of quality bread in this country. In the process it has also educated the populace as to the taste and nutritional superiority of real bread over the industrial sliced pan. 

Included in that select group in the upper room at Highbank back in 2015 was Thibault Peigne — now one of the finest bakers in the country, whose Tartine Organic Bakery in Dublin has been turning out superb organic sourdough breads and exquisite pastries since 2012, servicing retail and catering outlets in Dublin and around Ireland, including the Alternative Bread Company in the English Market and in Dunnes in Bishopstown Court shopping centre.

Another reason for The Menu making mention of Thibo is that he has finally got around to realising a long-held plan/dream of opening a bakery cafe, the very gorgeous Russell Street Bakery, in Dublin 1. It retails a range of sourdoughs (made with the very splendid Wildfarmed flour, produced by regenerative farming, and also using Irish flours), baguettes, ciabatta, lavash, brioche, ryes, along with classic and modern Danish pastries, Viennoiserie, confectionery, hot and cold savoury breakfast options, sandwiches, toasties, focaccias, as well as superb Imbibe coffee, plus a tasteful selection of deli items, including bags of Imbibe coffee (roasted in Dublin by Gary Grant’s Imbibe roastery), olive oils, Irish cheeses, and cured meats.

With the Cork hurlers yet to decide whether they will give The Menu a day out in Dublin this year, The Menu will have to bide his time before visiting, but in the meantime he picked up a loaf of the 30% Rye Sourdough (wheat flour, wholemeal rye) in the English Market and the next morning enjoyed a classic old-school breakfast of soft-boiled eggs with toast soldiers, followed by yet more toast, slathered with butter and marmalade, and a lovely great bowl of cafe au lait, for this particular loaf makes for one of the finest toasting breads around.

• tartine.ie or @russellst.bakery on Instagram.