The Menu: Gourmet takeout, pizza worth waiting for and coffee with the cool factor

The Guji coffee dock in Cork’s Marina district is rapidly becoming an iconic landmark on the local landscape. Picture: Joe McNamee

The Menu will be donning his finest judicial apparel to act as judge for what promises to be a thoroughly enjoyable competition running over the next two weeks. Beginning Nov 4, available Wednesday to Sunday on both weeks, anyone ordering a click and collect finish-at-home meal from Greene’s restaurant in MacCurtain Street, in Cork, will be encouraged to submit an online photo of their own plated up version of each dish with a prize of a free GreenesAtHome dinner for four and a bottle of Prosecco up for grabs.

Dine and win

The extensive, and ever-changing menu recently offered a range of dishes including seafood and vegetarian options as well as more casual burger and wings boxes, along with sides, desserts and wines. All packs included detailed heating and serving instructions, supplemented by online tutorials. To enter, simply order your meal online, plate it up as prettily as you possibly can, take a photo and post online with the hashtag #GreenesAtHome, tagging The Menu (@jozeemac) and Greene’s (@greenescork) on Instagram. 

To order, visit www.greenesrestaurant.com/menus

Michelin star at home

Cork's only Michelin-starred restaurant, Ichigo Ichie, is offering a takeout option of Japanese comfort classics.Picture: Jim Coughlan.

The Click-and-Collect offering on Leeside has just taken another giant leap forward with the news that the city’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, Ichigo Ichie, is rejoining the fray with a ‘Nabeya takeout offering, classic Japanese comfort food. (The literal translation of ‘nabe’ is ‘hot pot’ while ‘ya’ translates as ‘house’.) Nabe involves cooking meat, fish and vegetables in a delicious stock and as ingredients are added, it gains in richness and flavour before finally adding rice to complete a perfect winter warmer. The three nabe currently on offer are chicken broth, miso Dillisk butter broth and duck and soy broth (with full details of all ingredients online) and can be pre-ordered and paid for by phone on Wednesdays from 10am to 2pm and will be available for collection on Fridays and Saturdays from 4pm to 7pm. Tel [phone] to order. 

www.ichigoichie.ie

Pizza perfection

The Menu has been working harder than ever to keep up with the new takeout offerings of all those wonderful Irish hospitality businesses pivoting their operations to respond to the Covid 19 crisis and pizza, in particular, is always especially popular Chez Menu. He recently enjoyed some very splendid pizzas from Pompeii Pizza, based in the Franciscan Well Brewery (which also offered him the opportunity to pick up some beers from the brewery’s own extensive takeaway offering of fine craft beers, cocktails and wines) a pizza Bianca (Potato Slices, Paprika, Fior di Latte, Rosemary, Parmesan, Sea Salt) proving quite sublime and the Pompeii bases, employing Irish wheat flour milled in house and an extended fermentation time for the dough, are probably the best now available in Cork city and perhaps further afield, certainly the best The Menu has enjoyed in quite some time. Their finish-at-home chilled pizza kits also come highly recommended. www.pompeiipizza.ie & 

www.franciscanwellbrewery.com

Galway-based Dough Bros pizza kits offer woodfired wonders delivered to your door to be finished at home

The pleasure derived from the pizza kit from Dough Brothers, in Galway, began before The Menu first took a bite. The kit features top drawer ingredients including three Dough Bros Wood Fired Pizza Bases, Dough Bros San Marzano Tomato Sauce, Fresh Basil, Parmesan, 250g Toonsbridge Dairy Fresh Mozzarella, Wild Garlic Dip and a choice of three toppings (from Pesto/Olives/Nduja/Salami) with the option to add more from a splendidly curated list, and the finished results met their fate before an immensely appreciative audience that soon descended into mayhem as The Menu’s clan fought bitterly over the final slices. 

www.thedoughbros.ie

Cocktail hour

Kinsale Mead has commenced weekly online tastings of their barrel-aged meads, available to all manner of groups who’d like to get together online, from family and friends to corporate or work gatherings. Participants in the 40 minute tutored tasting are treated to a colourful history of mead in Ireland as they sample from pre-ordered tasting kits including four 50ml bottles, an exclusive tasting glass, tasting card and discounts on online purchases. The next event takes place on November 12 at 7pm. 

www.kinsalemeadco.ie/product/online-talk-tasting-m/

Coffee dock

The vivid autumnal backdrop of Cork’s Dockland/Marina district has become more colourful still in recent times with the arrival of the bubble gum pink Guji coffee dock, currently the must-have post on Instagram for Leeside locals, but this very lovely liveried coffee stall is no mere candied confection for online consumption as it is the brainchild of Alan Andrews of Old Barracks Roastery, in Birdhill, Co Tipperary, a very fine roasting outfit indeed. On a recent visit, The Menu enjoyed a very ‘user-friendly’ Colombian (La Mesa) but also procured a little something to take back to the ‘lab’ for further experimentation, Ethiopian Peaberry beans from Guji Highland (hence the name) which yielded an astonishingly potent espresso, creamy of body, mild to medium acidity and sporting the dark rich and funky fruit notes of the Tumbes chocolate bean. What’s more, Andrews is currently constructing an outlet in the recently opened and then just as quickly closed Marina Market premises from where he shall be selling finest Irish and imported speciality food products as well as housing a showroom for all manner of wondrous speciality coffee kit and caboodle. 

www.guji.ie and www.theoldbarracks.ie