The Menu: The best of Spanish food and drink at Eat Spain Drink Spain
Eat Spain Drink Spain (until October 19) is the ongoing celebration of the very best food and drink culture from one of his most favourite countries in the world
The impossibly fabulous Restaurant Chestnut, in Ballydehob, has teamed up with new arrival Native Guesthouse for a special midweek hospitality and dining package,
Chestnut X Native Hightail to Ballydehob, set to run through autumn, is an exclusive offer that sees guests relish the Michelin-starred restaurant’s superb tasting menu before essaying the short three-minute stroll back to the newly opened luxury guesthouse, a deeply sympathetic restoration of a traditional Irish farmhouse incorporating contemporary decor and quality Irish design and materials.
- Wednesdays/Thursdays in October and November. native.ie
The Menu predicts a big seasonal success for Aniar chef/proprietor JP McMahon’s , a fine stocking filler for those who are almost as happy to learn about food as to eat it and, in this case, about Irish food culture and some of the iconic foodstuffs, both ‘high’ and ‘low’ that have backboned our cuisine.
Selecting 100 different foods, McMahon employs them as part of a deeper dive into what exactly makes Irish food ‘Irish’, examining our food history from the arrival of the first settlers 10,000 years ago right up to present day, ranging from beef, dairy, seaweed and oysters to more contemporary foods and including certain processed foodstuffs that we have taken — inexplicably? — to our hearts, such as Findus Crispy Pancakes, Angel Delight and most recently, that garage forecourt deli staple, the jambon.
Written as a riposte to those who say we have no food culture, the level of historical research is immediately apparent, including regular scholastic citations, but it all adds up to a most readable and informative tome.
Eat Spain Drink Spain (until October 19) is the ongoing celebration of the very best food and drink culture from one of his most favourite countries in the world, with restaurants, retailers, and hospitality venues across the land showcasing the best of traditional and modern Spanish fare, including tastings, wine dinners, tapas trails, interactive workshops, and other unique events.
Special mention to Sharon Noonan (Best Possible Taste podcaster) and our own Leslie Williams who host an evening wine pairing dinner (Oct 9) at Limerick’s Mustard Seed.
One of The Menu’s best dining experiences of the year so far was at the Caitlin Ruth summer residency in Levi’s, in Ballydehob, where the magnificent Caitlin Ruth turned out a sublime Mexican-influenced menu, deploying South of the border sorcery on exquisite West Cork produce so news she is to pop up for an exclusive one night only four course dinner (Oct 7) at Plugd, in Cork, is a cue to get booking.
Plugd is Jimmy Horgan’s fabulous little record/coffee shop by day but by night becomes the bricks and mortar home to Brian O’Connor’s Brian’s Wines, already one of The Menu’s favourite new hospitality venues on Leeside.
- eventbrite.com
The Menu has never really bought into the idea of ‘spring lamb’, finding the flavour of such young meat to be overly callow and only really begins to salivate properly at the prospect of lamb, and Calvey’s Achill Mountain Lamb really gets his juices flowing.
Calvey’s nationwide delivery service of a variety of multiple cuts and weights makes for terrific value, and The Menu most recently enjoyed a gorgeous rack of Calvey’s Achill Mountain Lamb.
Marinated overnight in a simple rub of olive oil, garlic and rosemary, and following a brief dalliance with the oven, he then served up tender, pink and deeply flavoursome meat, fat, redolent of the salty marshlands alongside the Atlantic Ocean on which these lambs graze, with a simple buttery mash and confit leeks.
