The Menu: brought to you by two-time award-winning food critic Joe McNamee

"The Menu was greatly honoured to receive his second award as Best Irish Restaurant Critic at the third annual Irish Food Writing Awards, at a banquet in Dublin’s RDS, followed by a reception in The Merrion Hotel’s Cellar Bar, with over 90 award winners in attendance."

Sat, 04 Nov, 2023 - 02:00

Joe McNamee

Michelin on the wane?

In surprising news for the Irish culinary world, Michelin-starred Ichigo Ichie is ending a very special chapter, not only for Leeside dining but for Ireland at large.

The restaurant is to call time on the delivery of its traditional Japanese-style formal kaiseki menu on December 23, which will almost inevitably lead to the loss of what is currently the only Michelin star held in Cork City.

Over the decades, beginning many years before he became a professional scribe writing on matters of the belly, The Menu has engaged in myriad passionate epicurean affairs with all manner of restaurants, on the Oul’ Sod and elsewhere in the world.

This involves not only repeat visits but the building up over time of a personal relationship with both people and place that becomes almost proprietorial, as in “my restaurant”, much as a body in need of a jorum might head to “my local”, and it is a commonplace experience all over the world, the ultimate goal of practitioners of well-achieved hospitality.

The thing is, however, for diners, most of these relationships end as passions wane and eventually wander to another establishment where a new flame is lit.

So, it is only when a personal favourite closes before its time, when a special relationship is still in full flight, that true heartbreak ensues for the customer, but rare indeed are the restaurants that last forever and recent turbulent times have seen the premature closing of more than a few very special establishments.

Last year, Galway’s Michelin-starred Loam very sadly shut up shop for good and just this week, Michael Deane announced the closing of his Michelin-starred Eipic, in Belfast.

And there is an international flavour to the trend with Michael O’Hare, chef-patron of The Man Behind The Curtain, in Leeds, in Britain, is closing his Michelin-starred restaurant to reopen as the infinitely more casual Psycho Sandbar, aiming for “a surf shack feel”, but saying goodbye to the current incarnation of Ichigo Ichie will bring an especially salty tear to The Menu’s eye and a poignant rumble to his tum.

As you will read elsewhere on this site, it was not so much economic imperatives that foisted these changes on Takashi Miyazaki and his partner Stephanie Higgins as it was a genuine desire for a change of pace and format.

So while The Menu will miss the extraordinary dining experience that was Ichigo Ichie’s kaiseki menu, he is delighted to report that the restaurant is to be reborn as Ichigo Ichie Bistro & Natural Wine, a much more casual and accessible dining experience.

While the original was one of the finest dining experiences in Ireland, the cost of delivering such superb and intricate fare meant it was prohibitively expensive for too many otherwise potential customers, and The Menu has more than a sneaking suspicion that Ichigo Ichie 2.0 will not only draw in a whole new dining audience for a new variation on Takashi’s own unique Hiberno-Japanese cuisine, but within months of its rebirth next January will come to be recognised as a quite different but equally brilliant Irish restaurant.

The king is dead, long live the king!

ichigoichie.ie

Film and food

Way back in another lifetime, The Menu put down seven or eight years of involvement in various guises with the Cork International Film Festival and is delighted once more to resume engaging with this quite rightly globally renowned festival, albeit in a different role to days of yore, when he hosts a panel discussion (November 15) at Triskel Arts Centre after the screening of Virgilio.

Virgilio is a documentary film about chef Virgilio Martinez, whose globally renowned restaurant, Central, in Lima, Peru, is currently No 2 on the World’s Greatest Restaurants list and whose wife, Pía Leon, is currently considered to be the world’s best female chef.

The film is a study of Virgilio’s evolution as a chef as he came to engage on a new, deeper and groundbreaking level with the produce of his native country, and The Menu will be joined on stage by Michelin star chef, Takashi Miyazaki; co-founder of My Goodness and the Cork Urban Soil Project, Virginia O’Gara; and Head of Plant Science, School of BEES, UCC, Barbara Doyle Prestwich.

This screening and event is just one part of an intriguing culinary strand of film programming which pairs screenings with some of Cork’s finest creative culinary practitioners.

Events also include: A Chef For Dali (November 10), in which a talented chef encounters artist Salvador Dali, triggering the birth of a new culinary genius, followed by an after-hours local, seasonal pop-up supper in The Farmgate Café, in the English Market; Stella, a young Neapolitan seeks to become the first Michelin starred pizza chef, followed by a Pop-up Pizza Party with Volcano Woodfired Pizza, at NeighbourFood Apple Market; The Taste of Things (Pot-au-feu) (November 19), a historical drama starring Juliette Binoche followed by a cave-à-manger style fork supper with at L’Atitude 51.

corkfilmfest.org

Victorious night

The Menu was greatly honoured to receive his second award as Best Irish Restaurant Critic at the third annual Irish Food Writing Awards, at a banquet in Dublin’s RDS, followed by a reception in The Merrion Hotel’s Cellar Bar, with over 90 award winners in attendance.

While the numbers have skyrocketed over the years, when it comes to quantifying The Menu’s ever-expanding waistband, the business of writing about food has not had a corresponding impact on his bank balance, so journalist Suzanne Campbell’s initiative — now in its third year and growing exponentially — bringing together some of the biggest names in world food (including Rene Redzepi, Xanthe Clay, Fiona Beckett and Tom Parker Bowles) has been a boon to Irish food writers, shining a light on often brilliant yet overlooked work and providing inspiration to keep ploughing what was betimes a lonely furrow.

John and Sally McKenna were the deserved recipients of a lifetime achievement award and afterwards The Menu was delighted to celebrate with fellow Irish Examiner and Echo nominees Michelle Darmody, Leslie Williams, Rachel Martin, Kate Ryan and most especially his fellow Irish Examiner award winner, Caroline Hennessy.