1. Picture That

I am writing this week’s column outside in the garden such is the weather at the moment. It is not just the Irish that are obsessed with the weather, however — talk to any grape grower or winemaker.

Joe McNamee talks to the dynamic team behind the West Waterford Festival of Food, which runs from April 9-12 in Dungarvan, and about how it has evolved into one of the country’s finest celebrations of culinary tradition and food heritage.

The Menu gets greatly exercised about food security — ready access to delicious and nutritious food is a fundamental right. 

The annual Irish Food Writers’ Guild Awards, in Dublin’s Michelin-starred L’Ecrivain, is invariably one of the finer beanos in the culinary calendar, with Chef Derry Clarke always putting on an exceedingly fine nosebag, each course based on the produce of a particular award winner.

Believing attendance at an Irish food festival is a state of grace any God-fearing Gael should aspire to on a near daily basis.

There comes a time in spring when The Menu pokes his nose into the air and draws deep a draught from the east, checking the wind for first stirrings of his beloved West Waterford Festival of Food in Dungarvan (April 10-14).

IT’S one of the most magical hotel arrivals in Ireland. There you are, driving across the country with the weight of the world on your shoulders, when all of a sudden, you pull up at a little slipway dipping into the River Suir.

As The Menu is wont to say, ‘time flies when you’re having food’ and 52 columns later, The Menu today celebrates its first anniversary. And, as it all began last year with Dungarvan and the West Waterford Festival of Food, it seems entirely appropriate to kick off this most auspicious day with further tidings of a town and festival most dear to The Menu’s heart.

Food for thought at West Waterford festival