The Menu: Back to the Burren for the Slow Food Festival
The Burren Slow Food Festival, Photograph by Eamon Ward
The Menu is quite overjoyed at the prospect of returning to the Burren for the annual Burren Slow Food Festival (May 19), to once more celebrate the produce and producers of one of the most beautiful places on earth, mixing speakers and cookery demos with the traditional food and craft fair in Lisdoonvarna.
Superb local fare on offer will include cheeses from some of the Menu’s favourite cheesemakers, honey, premium meats, distilled products and freshly caught seafood, with the 12 food producers who make up the Burren GEOfood brand promoting the health, environmental and economic benefits of locally grown and produced food.
Amongst those manning the hob for cooking demos are Martyn Whyte (Glas restaurant, at Hotel Doolin), Jonathan Farrell from Gregan’s Castle and Peter Jackson from the Roadside Tavern gastro-pub in Lisdoonvarna. Peter Jackson will also cook a five courser for the Burren Slow Food Banquet (May 18), also marking the remarkable Burren Smokehouse’s 35th year in business.
- Tickets: burrenexperiences.ie/upcoming-events.
After a wonderful few days in Dungarvan at the Waterford Food Festival, The Menu is very much looking forward to a rapid return, and a Visit Waterford four-day Slow Travel Experience sounds just the ticket for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the myriad pleasures of both city and county, while ditching the car for more sustainable forms of transport.
Beginning with arrival to Waterford city by bus, train or bicycle, head from East to West along the Waterford Greenway, which links to Dunmore East, Dungarvan, Ardmore, Lismore and the main bus route to Tramore, which takes bicycles.
Highlights include an EPIC walking tour of Waterford city with its 1000 years of history beginning with its Viking foundations and, once you hit the fabulous Waterford Greenway, a must-see destination en route is stunning Mount Congreve Gardens.
Dungarvan is replete with myriad opportunities to eat including a thoroughly rejuvenated Tannery restaurant and Eunice Power’s AndChips and A Taste Waterford Tour heads for the hills, to meet producers up in the stunning Comeraghs and Knockmealdowns.
Ardmore has the five-star Cliff House Hotel and it’s Michelin-starred restaurant while Tramore has really wormed its way into The Menu’s affections in recent times, thanks in particular to Seagull Bakery, The Beach House restaurant and Mezze cafe and deli.
Galway is en fete for the month of May with the Blás na Bealtaine festival of food created by Blás Na Gaillimhe (A Taste of Galway) food network with a wide-ranging programme of workshops, talks, and events, including a feijoada weekend at Chef Laura Rosso, while Aniar has a pop-up oyster bar.
Jess Murphy (Kai) and Pasta Tony teach the art of pasta making, accompanied by Italian salads and fine wines in Massimo Bar, Daróg does its delightful thing with the finest wines, and the magnificent Sheridan’s is the place for your cheese fix.
That is just a small flavour of a fabulous month but Galway Food Tours and Fable Tours are a mighty option for those seeking an educational epicurean immersion in the food capital of the West.
While The Menu won’t be busting out of his own bodice any time soon, he reckons the understated elegance of Cork’s Imperial Hotel is certainly a becoming venue its Bridgerton-inspired Season’s Diamond Package including themed afternoon tea from by the hotel’s pastry chefs, signature cocktails, spa treatments, and an overnight stay for two in one of Cork’s most iconic hotels in the heart of the city.
The Menu has been revisiting an old favourite, Cashel Blue, one of the front runners from the early years of the Irish farmhouse cheese movement, now celebrating its 40th birthday.
It recently became only the second ever Irish cheese to be awarded Reserve Champion at the prestigious British Cheese Awards.
Cashel Blue is quite magnificent, a blue capable of holding its head high on any global cheeseboard, so The Menu has been tucking in with a vengeance in recent times, relishing its soft, creamy crumble, that robust salty sweetness and the tongue-tingling spicy ‘blue’ tang.
It works superbly as an ingredient, in tarts, sauces, dips and soups, as either grace note or principal player in all manner of salads and is sublime in The Menu’s homemade gnocchi but like all true aristocrats of the cheeseboard, it is at its finest when eaten unadorned, although The Menu does like to wash it down with a fine PX sherry with toasted walnuts for textural contrast.
