The Menu: food is the way to the heart this Father's Day
Hand-painted chocolates from The Drinks Cabinet
The Menu’s progeny never really sweat it when Father’s Day (June 16) rolls around, rightly reckoning anything of extraordinary quality that can be eaten or drunk will meet with The Menu’s approval.
When it comes to such fare, Bradley’s Food Emporium (bradleysofflicence.com), in Cork city, is full to the brim with fabulous Father’s Day gifts, including a fine range of specialty food stuffs, along with one of the best ranges of craft beer and premium spirits in the country, all underpinned by a cracking wine offering.Â
Check out the refillable whiskey flask, a handsome leather-jacketed hip flask, that can be refilled in Bradley’s with a different premium spirit each time it needs to be replenished.Â
Should Papa be steering clear of the booze, then The Menu has always found himself partial to Grá Chocolates, and their Father’s Day range this year includes The Drinks Cabinet, 10 handpainted chocolates with fillings using fine stout, whiskey, gin and poitÃn from the West of Ireland, while The Big Daddy is a giant heart combining milk chocolate, caramel and peanut butter.
Of course, if the father in your life is as wonderful and thoroughly deserving human being as The Menu then you may well figure he deserves to be treated to a private gourmet food and wine pairing experience at Ashford Castle, beginning with an exclusive tasting in the historic wine cellars with head sommelier Paul Fogerty, followed by a five-courser from executive chef Liam Finnegan and Director of Chocolate and Pâtisserie, Paula Stakelum.
The ever-progressive GIY continues to lead the way having just added a refill store, Larder, at their Waterford-based GROW HQ, selling reusable, refillable or compostable essentials and eliminating much of the plastic packaging.
The offering includes organic cereals, nuts, seeds, rice, sugar, pasta, oils, herbs, spices, dried fruits and vegetables, flours, chocolate, purées and sauces and all are sold in refillable containers. Fresh food from the GROW HQ kitchen, including sandwiches, salads, dips, pestos and mustards is also available, soon to be joined by seasonal fruit and veg from the GIY market garden at Curraghmore Estate and will be either sold loose or available as a weekly veg box order.
The offering also includes a range of household cleaning products from all-purpose cleaners to fabric softeners, to detergents and wash-up liquids and, again, all are available for refill. All products are sold loose so bring your own empty bottles and containers, pre-weigh and then fill. More of this sort of thing, says The Menu!
There’s more than a few weeks to go until the shenanigans of Cork on a Fork food festival in August but The Menu advises early and eager pursuit of what promises to be one of the hottest tickets of all, for any of the 400 seats at the VQ Long Table Dinner, a collaborative effort from the dining establishments along MacCurtain St, Cork’s very own ‘food street’, the first proper public ‘outing’ for the recently and most gorgeously transformed thoroughfare.
Out on the wide open prairies of West Cork where the buffalo roam … actually, make that a farm in Kilnamartyra, near Macroom, which is where Johnny Lynch raises his buffalo, the milk of which then becomes the base material for the dairy alchemy of master cheesemaker Sean Ferry.
Their mozzarella and halloumi is nationally renowned but more recently, The Menu made a simple salad of tomatoes, basil and olive oil, and plonked a ‘pouch’ of room temperature burrata in the centre, then spearing the firm outer core with his knife allowing it to disgorge a most glorious sweet-ish cream all over the plate which The Menu mopped up with crusty baguette for a most ecstatic edible experience.
And there’s more, with Macroom Buffalo Cheese having released a range of yoghurts, with fine lactic flavours and the most extraordinarily dense and lush texture which The Menu has been wolfing down from dawn til dusk, employing it at will in breakfast smoothies, as a final addition to soups, as a herbed dressing for cold new potatoes and as a class of rich ‘fro-gurt’ that would give Italian gelato a run for its money.
