Menu: Celebrate Burns night at home and let the good times roll with award-winning sushi
Haggis and a ‘wee dram’, from the traditional Burns’ Supper from L Mulligan Grocer, part of the annual global celebration by Scots around the world of Scottish poet Robert Burns
Though a true Gael, The Menu equally acknowledges the substantial portion of his DNA that owes allegiance to the Thistle so is always aware each year of the importance of Burns’ Night on Jan 25. Always supping a dram (Irish whiskey, for The Menu!) in honour of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. So a Burns Meal Kit from the Celtic Ross Hotel sounds like the perfect repast with which to celebrate.
The West Cork version of the Scottish-themed feast has taken place each year since 2012 and The Menu still remembers most fondly its inaugural outing. But due to Covid 19 restrictions, chefs Alex Petit and Shane Deane — who have been playing a blinder with their West Cork food truck outside the hotel throughout the last year — have devised a special meal kit to be served up on the infinitely more civilised Saturday night (Jan 23) — two days prior to the official date. The kit (€70 for two people) includes a commencement cocktail and a ‘wee dram’ for the traditional toast to Rabbie Burns during the meal, while the meal comprises Cullen Skink fish soup (featuring Woodcock Smokery haddock), venison, and the essential haggis, along with a special Three Chimneys marmalade pudding. In addition, online videos cover all preparations, celebratory protocols and a recital of Burns’ poetry.
(To book: DM on Social Media @CelticRossHotel or Tel 023 884 8722)
L Mulligan Grocer, the Stoneybatter gastropub, is another long-time celebrant of Burns’ Night, but for the first time in 11 years is also forced to abandon their traditional meal and instead offer a virtual Zoom event (Jan 23), accompanied by three-courser and snacks, paired with Scottish drinks, a tutored whisky tasting, bagpiper, games and of course lashings of Irn Bru (€50 a head, click-and-collect or €55 delivered in Dublin, delivery charge donated to Scottish Woodland Trust). Menu includes Scottish gin, apple & rose cocktail, cockaleekie pate and oatcakes, Mulligan’s signature starter Scotch Egg paired with a dram of highland whiskey, main course of haggis, neeps & tatties paired with Scottish ale and a dram on the side before finishing with the traditional Scottish cranachan dessert and more whisky, all consumed to an online backdrop of poetry, games, music and competitions (be sure to don your finest tartan ‘troos’ or kilt!).
Book via https://lmulligangrocer.clickandcollection.com[/url[
Despite restrictions, The Menu is delighted whenever presented with the opportunity to continue sampling finest fare from our hospitality sector and a body would be hard-pressed to think of anything finer than the offering from Ichigo Ichie, Takashi Miyazaki’s Michelin-starred Cork city restaurant so news of a renewed takeout option is profoundly welcome.
Granted, this new sushi takeaway option is an entirely different beast to Takashi’s more usual tasting menus but the selection of Nigiri (thinly sliced fish, raw or cooked, on rice), Maki Sushi Rolls and Miso Soup will be just about the finest iterations of such you are likely to taste in many a long moon. Available Mon to Fri, phone orders taken and pre-paid between 10am to 12pm, collection (allotted times for social distancing), 12pm to 3pm. Tel: 021-427 9997.
The ever-innovative Market Lane restaurant group keep the flag flying on Leeside with extremely stylish Keep Cork Going tote bags, €6 a pop with all profits going to St Vincent de Paul, so why not pick up one to carry home your takeaway evening meal.
Though a keen swimmer, over the years, an overly self-pampered Menu had grown softer than a sybarite’s slumberdown, and had long foresworn saltwater for its chlorinated inferior, until late summer 2019 when he survived an immersion in an especially frigid Lough Hyne near Baltimore and further resolved to get on board the open water swimming bandwagon in earnest and last year embraced it with gusto, his final swim of 2020 coming on a stormy day in October on the eve of second lockdown. Whilst currently summoning up the courage for a return to now quite Baltic winter water, he knows his return will be greatly enhanced by a flask of something hot and healing which is why he was greatly intrigued to hear of DreamBeans (a collaborative effort with Irish roasters and coffee company Greenbean), the brainchild of another keen ocean swimmer, Pat McArdle.
McArdle was seeking out a a post-swim caffeine kick that would work well with or without the addition of milk, most especially cold milk when a frigid body is in need of all the heat going, and the resulting roast, Rising Tide, is a crowd-pleasing blend designed for a broad church rather than one for the single-origin purists and in that respect it is entirely successful, resulting in a mellow brew of low acidity, with sweet chocolate and cocoa fruit notes, quite perfect when filter brewed and then drunk from a flask on an icy cold day and quite the all-rounder for back home at base camp.
- Due to ongoing Covid 19 travel restrictions, this magazine’s regular restaurant review page will return next week, but covering hospitality offerings closer to the Irish Examiner’s Cork HQ. However, we greatly look forward to resuming ‘normal service’, hopefully, in the very near future, returning to national coverage from both of our reviewers, Joe McNamee and Leslie Williams.
- The Menu is also delighted to feature any small or medium-sized Irish food producer, retail or hospitality outlet temporarily pivoting their business for the duration of lockdown. Email details to: themenu@examiner.ie
