The Menu: International collaboration at Sounds from a Safe Harbour

Plus: TU Dublin's Brew College, tours of Castlemartyr's Terre Garden, and new heads at the top of Elbow Lane

Takashi Miyazaki, of Ichigo Ichi restaurant at Fenns Quay, Cork. Pic: Eddie O'Hare

Sounds from a Safe Harbour

One of the very best cultural offerings to hit Leeside in recent years has been the very splendid music and arts smorgasbord that is Sounds from a Safe Harbour and this year’s programme is no different, including an edible element to the offering. 

An Ireland X Iceland collaboration, The Last Supper, sees chef-proprietors Takashi Miyazaki, of Cork city’s Ichigo Ichie and Rob Krawczyk of Ballydehob’s Restaurant Chestnut, join forces with Georg Arnar Halldórsson, previously of Óx, in Reykjavik, as they take over The Mirror Room, at the River Lee hotel for a very special seven-course menu to close SFSH23, with Cork artist and researcher Sophie Gough working with the group to create a representative artwork inspired by seaweeds.

Limited to just 100 people, tickets to this exclusive event were released just this week, with service split into three long table settings (7pm, 7:45pm and 8:30pm).

Tickets are €200 and €260 with a natural wine pairing curated by wine importers Le Caveau, or with the house wine list from which to purchase on the night. Alternative menus are available for both vegetarians and coeliacs.

• soundsfromasafeharbour.com/

Brew College

The Menu is very excited about a rare and especially attractive opportunity for any passionate craft beer home brewers to turn their hobby into a profession with a Human Capital Initiative (HCI) funded qualification from TU Dublin, which is launching five new full-time postgraduate programmes, a postgraduate diploma in brewing and distilling, for those with a Level 8 (NFQ) or higher degree in Science, Engineering, Food, or Business and an Advanced Entry programme designed for those with previous industry experience. 

Both are free for individuals seeking work, while those in employment or recent graduates pay just 10% of the tuition fee, and commence in September 2023, with a mix of online and in-person classes.

The Irish brewing and distilling sectors are going through a boom period right now and this affords a tremendous opportunity to a select few individuals to get on board this fast moving train.

• tudublin.ie

Terre Garden Tours

Having recently announced midweek and lunch sittings at Terre, Castlemartyr Resort’s Michelin Star restaurant, the team is further complementing the offer with the launching of the Terre Garden Tour.

This will feature the restaurant’s Chef Patron Vincent Crepel’s collaboration with Kevin O’Shea, the Castlemartyr Resort gardener, creating an organic garden on the grounds of the East Cork hotel, supplying the kitchens with fresh, seasonal herbs, microgreens, edible flowers, and vegetable produce for their menus.

The tour is exclusively for Terre diners and is led by Kevin, and will appeal to keen gardeners and gastronomes. 

The biodiverse and regenerative garden provides fresh, sustainable garden-to-plate produce and will be pollinated by the resort beehives which produce honey used in the menus.

A ‘Petit’ nine-stage menu will be available midweek and can be enjoyed as part of a midweek gastro stay, complementing new lunch time sittings on Fridays and Saturdays, and the Terre Petit Menu & Garden Tour package is priced from €450 per room, bed, and breakfast.

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It's a family affair at Elbow Lane Restaurant in Cork as brothers Harrison and Ronan Sharpe take the top jobs.

Sharpe Operators

With more than a surfeit of hospitality closures and departures since the end of lockdowns, it always gives The Menu great pleasure to bring tidings of positive changes in the sector.

In the justifiably popular Elbow Lane, which will be 10 years old next year, it is becoming a real family affair as head chef Harrison Sharpe has been joined by his brother, Ronan, as the new general manager, continuing a long family tradition of working in food as their parents’ Irish
Gourmet Butter business, based in Waterford, has featured prominently here in the past.

• elbowlane.ie

Adam Nevin, at Carton House

Homecoming feast

The Menu wouldn’t be surprised to find the Michelin inspector sniffing around The Morrison Room restaurant in Carton House, in Maynooth, Co Kildare, as the highly experienced Adam Nevin returns to his home town to take over the reins after garnering some quite superb experience,
beginning by training in Ballymaloe Cookery School, then going on to the Shelbourne in Dublin, before heading abroad to join Alyn Williams’ restaurant at The Westbury in London as Chef de Partie before joining Tom Kerridge’s team at the two Michelin starred Pub, The Hand and Flowers, then eventually moving on to become head chef at The Grill at The Dorchester, in London. 

Watch this space, we say!

• cartonhouse.com

The Garden of Grá boxset from Grá Chocolates

TODAY’S SPECIAL

As long as The Menu has a belly, then he will always find some edible distraction for the climactically catastrophic weather and the latest from Grá Chocolates, The Garden of Grá, a limited edition inspired by summer gardens certainly does the trick for The Menu including elderflower chocolate with apple gel; Turkish delight with hibiscus; white chocolate ganache with lavender and blackcurrant jam; and, orange blossom fondant with ganache and rich dark chocolate.

As ever, Gráinne Mullins’ confected creations present as sublime artistic creations ever before they enter the gob, but once on board the palate, they are veritable Sistine Chapels of chocolate, the Turkish delight with hibiscus shimmering with musky exotic fruits and the orange blossom fondant with ganache and dark chocolate redeeming the reputation of the marriage of chocolate and orange, so long traduced by a certain high street confection that The Menu always spurned, here rendered as a balanced and sophisticated choice.

• grachocolates.com