Feast your eyes on this: This summer's best food festivals
travels the country for his wrap of some of the best food festivals coming our way this summer.
Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of food festivals across the country, to such an extent, I felt this article needed a slick little intro to properly convey the sense of this deluge, perhaps something tongue-in-cheek to tease out the notion that some may even be putting the cart before the horse, or the ‘festival’ before the ‘food’, in their anxiety to jump on the bandwagon. Aha, I thought, I’ll conjure up a vision of some fella opening a bag of Tayto and another fella makes it the basis of a food festival. Then a press release lands in my in-box announcing Ireland’s very first Crisp Festival.
Deep thinkers amongst you may chalk this down as further evidence of the demise of satire and irony in this Trumpian meta-age but for today let’s just take it as reinforcement for my initial point: there are an awful lot of food festivals, some good, some great and others still getting there. Here is our selection of some (not all!) of the very best festivals that don’t just pepper the bill with a clatter of celeb chefs but ideally seek to build a solid structure atop the triple pillars of a thriving local food producers scene, a healthy hospitality sector and a very supportive local community; should there be a perceived need for the additional glitter and glam of some top culinary personages, well and good, but without the substantial underpinning of serious food culture and empathy, even the presence of the very finest chefs in the land can do no more than put lipstick on an extremely runty pig.
First, to be crystal clear: I salute the genius that first conceived of a Crisp Festival. Fun? Yes! Frivolous? Of course, but the crew behind The Eatyard Crisp Festival are allowed to do frivolous on foot of their serious pedigree when it comes to conjuring up quality street food events and happenings. Buy an advance ticket for a tenner and you get it all back on entry in the form of beverage, crisps and a tenner in food vouchers. Events include blind crisp tasting, Tayto V King debate, pop-up crisp sandwich station and a crisp tasting menu.
(June 14-17; www.the-eatyard.com/crispfestival)
A Taste of West Cork makes a strong case for being the ‘largest’ food festival, in terms of geographical reach, an always-humongous programme of events spread across the towns, villages and islands of West Cork, Ireland’s original birthplace of the small food producer movement, and currently also undergoing a welcome revival in the local hospitality sector. An always impressive array of chefs, local and ‘imported’ cook pop-up dinners in often unusual locations (this writer has served up nine-coursers on consecutive years in the very splendid Uillinn Arts Centre, in Skibbereen) but the superb local produce remains at the heart of everything, culminating in the Sunday market in Skibbereen.
(Sept 7-16; www.atasteofwestcork.com/festival/)
The Galway Oyster Festival these days is properly titled ‘The Galway Oyster & Seafood Festival’ but it wasn’t always thus for this legendary shindig emanates from a time before ‘food’ and ‘Ireland’ ever shared a sentence that didn’t also include ‘famine’. This writer recalls an unmerciful skite some 30 years ago when he certainly sampled an oyster or two but the serious ‘atin’ was reserved for dirty black porter, and the occasional fry for medical reasons, Galway then being rather a culinary backwater. Times change though and while the craic is still unsurpassable, it’s also possible to do some serious eating as well. Actually, Galway has improved so radically as a food destination — currently one of the European Regions of Gastronomy — that it can now also support the splendid Galway Food Festival, which took place earlier this year.
(Sept 28-30; www.galwayoysterfestival.com)
A personal favourite for its unparalleled party spirit, The West Waterford Festival of Food, founded in 2008 and taking place in April, always heralded the beginning of the food festival season until Galway stole a march (rather literally, re-locating the Galway Food Festival to the end of March). For this writer, the food world truly shakes off the lingering hairshirts of January resolutions at the WWFoF, where the community in the lovely seaside town of Dungarvan (aptly nicknamed ‘Fungarvan’) constitutes the real backbone of the festival. Supplement that splendid community spirit with an ever-imaginative programme and some superb locally-based producers (including Dungarvan Brewing Co; Blackwater Distillery) and chefs (Paul Flynn, Eunice Power and Michelin-starred Martijn Kaijuiter) and you have a local festival punching like a national champion.
(www.westwaterfordfestivaloffood.com)
Then there is the matter of festivals within festivals: though it pains to rehash that tired old cliché, that food is the new rock’n’roll, it is undeniably apposite if you fetch up at any rock festival in modern Ireland, not one of which is complete without a serious programme of food events. The Grandaddy of them all in this respect is the Theatre of Food conceived of by Vanessa Clarke and splendidly curated at Electric Picnic by food writers John and Sally McKenna since 2010. There are plenty of chefs doing the demo but there is also a whole lot more edible anarchy afoot and audiences lap it up: this writer recalls hosting a ToF event with Kanturk butchers Jack and Tim McCarthy one Saturday night some years ago when the call came to let the audience know headliners The Cure were going on stage and not a soul left the ToF tent. Mind you, we were concocting and drinking rather unique Bloody Marys on stage — made from fresh cattle blood!
(Aug 31- Sept 2; www.electricpicnic.ie/stage/theatre-food),
The original brains behind ToF, Vanessa Clarke is bringing it to the exquisite Curraghmore House, in Co Waterford, re-titled as Feast Together Now, a deliciously ‘edible’ strand to All Together Now, the new boutique music festival from promoter John Reynolds, original founder of Electric Picnic. Feast Together Now will see chef Kevin Thornton, a regular visitor to Ethiopia, recreate an African feast under the stars at Midnight in a secret garden using traditional methods and techniques while Carousel, a London-based outfit specialising in innovative pop-ups and parties look after the fine dining end of things and Deise native chef Paul Flynn prepares a Sunday Gospel Brunch, including bloody Marys and featuring the beyond-awesome London Gospel Choir.
(August 3-5) www.alltogethernow.ie
The Big Grill is currently the hippest kid on the festival block attracting participating chefs from around the world for the mother of all BBQs, the only proviso being they have to cook live over naked flame, hot coals or smoke. Top that up with a humongous selection of Irish craft beers and spirits, some cracking tunes and live music and a whole load of family-friendly entertainment including demos and workshops for the mother of all shindigs in Dublin’s Herbert Park. (Aug 18 & 19; www.biggrillfestival.com)
If the West Waterford Festival of Food always kicks off this writer’s year of travelling around Ireland in pursuit of the nosebag, then Dingle Food Festival is the one to closes it, nothing left afterwards but to start fattening the Christmas goose. The festival takes over almost the entirety of Dingle town with pop-up dining opportunities to be found along the taste trail in boutiques, galleries, shops and all sorts of random spaces to supplement that available in the splendid selection of restaurants. Also taking place over the weekend is the final judging and award ceremonies for the Blás na hÉireann awards, Ireland’s largest food awards, so the town is becomes pretty much the epicentre of Irish food for the weekend. (Oct 5-7; www.dinglefood.com)
With two Michelin-starred establishments (La Campagne and The Lady Helen at Mount Juliet) and several other fine eateries in one of Ireland’s most gorgeous towns, Kilkenny is a natural fit for a food festival and Savour Kilkenny has been a hot ticket for quite some years with an always entertaining family-friendly programme of demos, debates and delicious food, it makes for an ideal late autumnal closer to Ireland’s festival year. (Oct 25-29; www.savourkilkenny.com)
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