The Menu: Tutored beer-tasting at Cork's Elbow Lane
Russell Garrett, master brewer of Elbow Lane
Currently very much in the throes of a renewed love affair with Elbow Lane Smokehouse & Brewery, The Menu will take any excuse going to drop in.
Excuses in his book don’t come any better than the prospect of a tutored beer tasting, featuring the award-winning range of craft beers brewed to the rear of the rather bijou restaurant in a flyweight micro-brewery that punches like a heavyweight in the glass.
The 45-minute tastings (Saturdays, 12pm, throughout summer) led by head chef Harrison Sharpe and Elbow’s master brewer Russel Garrett, also offer a range of beer by-product tapas to pair with the beers and illustrating the ever ongoing in-house symbiosis between kitchen and brewery. Ticket price also includes a sustainably sourced, limited-edition Elbow Lane T-shirt illustrated by a local artist.
The Menu’s legendary languidness is being sorely tested by the failure of the rest of the country to follow up on his regular and rousing calls to the Irish dining public to do as he did several years ago, and fall for one of the best kept secrets in Irish dining.
Milesian, in lovely Castlegregory, Co Kerry, is where chef-proprietor Frankie Fitzgerald assembles a crack kitchen crew each summer who migrate to Co Kerry after winter seasons spent working in some of the coolest culinary hotspots in Ireland and around the world to deliver superb and concise menus of delicious local produce in a 200-year old traditional Irish cottage.
And as for the prices? At €35 for three courses, The Menu reckons it is some of the best value eating to be had anywhere in the country.
Restaurants ‘imported’ from Britain rarely tend to draw the same enthusiasm from Irish diners when they fetch up on these shores but there is no gainsaying the manner in which the Dublin branch of Hawksmoor has been taken into local hearts, thanks in no small part to their genuine commitment to using Irish produce, especially beef, and then serving it up as quite superb steaks in a stunning room.
Now ranked as the best steak restaurant in Ireland and 12th in the world, to celebrate their first birthday they are offering a complimentary portion of beef-dripping chips for the month of June with any of their best-selling cocktails (or pint of porter/glass of champagne).
Cully & Sully have teamed up with the McKenna Guides on a quest to find Ireland’s best bowl of chowder, with a nationwide call to the dining public to cast their vote for the SOUPerb Awards Champion 2024, with a chance to win an array of prizes including restaurant vouchers, stand-up paddle board and Cully & Sully goodies.
The Menu reckons it’s about time the good people at Ballymaloe Foods caught up with him in releasing their new product, Mayolish, a combination of their iconic tomato relish with their more recently released Ballymaloe Mayonnaise, as The Menu has been combining Myrtle Allen’s relish recipe with homemade mayo for longer than he cares to remember and then some time again before that.
Suffice to say, the rich mayo lends a lush creamy acidity while the sweet piquancy of the relish combine to make just about the finest ‘secret burger sauce’ a body could ask for, the crowning glory on some quite stunning burgers which The Menu has been barbecuing of late, although that is far from the only use to which it can be put.
What’s more, Ballymaloe Foods have also entered a key charity partnership with Food Cloud to reduce consumers’ food waste and address food security through consumer education and sharing of surplus production for redistribution to appropriate food charities.
