Joe McNamee: Vanessa Clarke was a true hidden hero of Irish food
"You mightn’t have known her name — precisely how she always liked it — but Vanessa Clarke was a true hidden hero of Irish food."
The life of the remarkable Vanessa Clarke was recently celebrated at a funeral service in Dublin, where she lived for many years, with her sons, Olan and Alex.
Iarla Ó Lionáird and Imelda May sang and afterwards the coffin headed south to Cork.
The following evening, the tiny funeral home in Inchigeelah was flush with Corkonians, many of a vintage stretching back to when Vanessa first left her family in West Cork for Cork City.
The graveyard was muted, no prayers, a lone singer, grief suspended in disbelief — gone at 58.
As light faded, mourners lingered, stalling final farewells to a largely unsung hero of Irish food.
At this year’s All Together Now music festival, in Co Waterford, you could eat vegan Tex-Mex (My Goodness), Middle Eastern barbecue (Great Oven X Tang), Filipino-Irish (Bahay), and Northern Thai (Dublin’s Achara, in a pop-up restaurant under canopy).
There were gourmet burgers, pie and mash, dumplings, spice bags, Chinese Sichuan, hot dogs, crepes, pizzas, juices, and terrific toasties at the Toonsbridge stall, owned by Vanessa’s sister, Jenny-Rose Clarke, and husband Toby Simmonds, co-owners of the English Market’s Sandwich Stall and The Real Olive Co.
An endless list, premium choices, the expected standard.
It wasn’t always so. Grizzled elders, veterans of Macroom Mountain Dew and Lisdoonvarna, of Leixlip and Slane, still have acid flashbacks, of the reflux kind, when recalling the grim, frozen, deep-fried fare of yore, not much beyond battered burgers and slimy chips.
It was Vanessa who wrought the changes.
When John Reynolds conceived of Electric Picnic in 2004, he reinvented the traditional survivalist slog through mud to the sound of music, entirely refashioning the festival experience into a multi-faceted cultural offering, with food accorded a starring role, led by Vanessa.
By then, Vanessa was proprietor of Dublin’s pioneering Good Food Store. She embraced her EP role with gusto, seeking out the novel, including falafel, UK’s Pieminister, a chai tent. She banned processed food and industrial burgers.
Chicken had to be Irish; chips handcut, not frozen; packaging, recyclable or biodegradable. EP began with 15 traders; within a few years, there were over 200, giant al fresco food courts, ever before food courts, with Vanessa overseeing all.
A massive operation, bigger each year, she took it further again, dreaming up Theatre of Food, a standalone performance space, eventually inviting food writers John and Sally McKenna to curate what is now one of the pre-eminent annual Irish food events, and where I first properly came to know Vanessa. But it was not the first time I met her.
That was in the 1980s, in Mesopotamia, a tiny vintage store in a Dickensian upper storey room above St Patrick Street, which she ran with her older sister, Victoria (wife of the late Shane McGowan).
A potent combo, vivacious Victoria brought snap, crackle, and pop; quietly assured, unflappable Vanessa appeared to have her hand firmly on the fiscal rudder.
She was only 15 years old, but already a born entrepreneur with an insatiable zest for life.
When John Reynolds launched All Together Now in 2018, Vanessa, naturally, by his side in charge of everything edible, invited me to curate and host the food stage, leading to the birth of my own travelling food roadshow, Grub Circus.
She held my hand every step of the way, teaching me that festival crisis management was merely a question of attitude — shit happens all the time, deal with it.
And nobody dealt with shit like Vanessa, a Zen-like combo of pragmatic calculation and inspired innovation.
Last year, she told me of her terminal diagnosis, saying she wouldn’t be doing ATN in August 2025. It copper-fastened my own then tentative decision to do likewise, unable to conceive of not having her in my corner.
A few weeks after the festival ended, I phoned her and wasn’t remotely surprised to learn she had turned up after all.
She’d had a “brilliant time, the best festival ever”. A trouper to the last, barely two months later, she was gone.
You mightn’t have known her name — precisely how she always liked it — but Vanessa Clarke was a true hidden hero of Irish food.
Social enterprise SumGood’s KickStart Kitchen Chef Training Programme pilot, offering chef training to commis standard to people in Direct Provision, and helping them to gain employment in the hospitality sector, has proven to be highly effective, with two trainees recently signing contracts to work in Stripe’s HQ Kitchen in Dublin.
To provide continued support for the programme, SumGood announces a live auction event (Oct 12) of over 100 artworks from The Grogan’s Bar Art Collection (1971 – 2017), taking place at the Market Bar, Fade St, Dublin, including works from established artists, with online bidding Invaluable, their partner company’s online bidding app.
A series of wine dinners (beginning November 5) at the wonderful Ballynahinch Castle are to be highly recommended, which will see head chef Danni Barry’s sublime seasonal menus will be paired with some very fine wines, in partnership with Taittinger Champagne and Febvre.
The evening begins with bubbly, followed by a five-courser showcasing a selection of Taittinger’s celebrated cuvées. Package (€595 for two) includes overnight stay and breakfast.
Yes, I am a Barry’s man — tea leaves though, none of those terrible teabags for this posh b***h — but when it comes to drinking tea, I do roam far and wide, and was very much taken by my recent sampling of Brady's Loose Leaf Tea.
Brady’s are primarily a coffee company but this, their blend of Kenyan black tea, packs a punch, a malty fortitude and strength of flavour, heavy on the tannins, that makes for the class of cup to get you up and running, especially after a night on the tiles.
And, in addition, I am also deeply smitten by the beautiful tin!
