Like any good army, the Irish economy is marching back to full-bellied recovery on its stomach with up to a half-dozen new restaurants flooding into one section of Cork city alone. 

This year’s Macroom Food Festival (Sept 23-25) sets out under the thematic heading of ‘Blás na hÁite’, which is as it should be for the lovely Cork town and its glorious hinterland, heaving with some very fine producers, farmers, and growers, many of them great favourites of The Menu. 

Café Paradiso in Cork has been named the best-rated fine dining establishment in Ireland by theTravellers’ Choice Restaurants awards.

The Dingle Food Festival is upon us again (October 2-4). 

UCC lecturer Mary Morrissy says a proper writing course may have gotten her to that IMPAC nomination a bit sooner, writes Colette Sheridan

A bar with name that sums up its catchment is up for sale: it’s the Thirsty Scholar, on Western Road/Lancaster Quay, near UCC, the Mercy Hospital and The River Lee Hotel which changed hands last year for €25m.

APRIL is Real Wine Month which focuses on minimal intervention “natural” wines and also low intervention organic and biodynamic wines.

I’m a rationalist with frequent bouts of spirituality.

Free meals — vegetarian curry — will be provided at Grand Parade, Cork, from 1pm tomorrow, as part of the Feed the City initiative.

Just because it is a wonky shape or isn’t the ‘right’ size doesn’t mean a vegetable isn’t edible.

City officials have been asked to introduce designated alcohol-free zones across the city centre for Cork’s St Patrick’s Day festival.

There will be such a thing as a free lunch at the St Patrick’s Festival in Cork, as the city will be serving free vegetarian curry to up to 5,000 hungry visitors as part of a sustainable eating initiative.

FOOD writing did not begin in the 1990s, with the rise of the celebrity chef and their (often ghostwritten) glossy tomes of recipes and pretty pictures. Mesopotamian clay tablets dating to 1750BC had recipes inscribed in a complex writing form.

Great food writers must master more than one discipline, because food’s in every aspect of our lives

REMOVING plants (or people) from their native soil and transplanting them to far off climes is not always successful but sometimes they thrive.

Café Paradiso, 16 Lancaster Quay, Cork, cafeparadiso.ie; tel: 021-4277939

NEW ZEALAND wine producers held their annual wine fair in Dublin earlier this month and it seems Ireland is now their fifth largest export market with sales having increased by around 12% in 2012.

Some eagle-eyed readers will recall no doubt recall The Menu’s debut column kicking off with an appeal for old china crockery to stock The Tearooms at the heart of the restoration of Fort Camden, in Crosshaven, ‘star’ of Diarmuid Gavin’s RTÉ series Dirty Old Towns.

The majority of Mardyke residents have been refused flood cover and had their insurance premiums doubled since the Cork floods of Nov 2009, a residents’ spokesperson has said.

THE traditional Christmas dinner leaves little to the imagination.

IT STRUCK without warning, leaving a trail of destruction and human misery in its wake. The river Lee burst its banks in the early hours of last Friday morning after millions of tonnes of water were released from the Inniscarra Dam, eight miles west of Cork city.

IT could be in west Cork, with its mad, fuchsia-coloured walls outside.

A TOP vegetarian chef took the bull by the horns at the country’s biggest beef marts to tempt cattle farmers and dealers with his award-winning cooking.

VEGETARIANS yesterday reacted with dismay after learning their favourite chocolate bars are now being made with animal products.

DINERS across Cork will be able to help the homeless thanks to a novel fundraising initiative launched yesterday.

CORK had the right mix of ingredients to sweep the boards at a major food marketing awards ceremony yesterday.

SLOW FOOD Ireland recently ran an art competition for Cork schools to raise awareness of the Cork Edible School Gardens Project.

Youghal Through the Ages: There is an Elizabethan Market at Barry's Lane today from 10am to 3pm with street entertainment.

THOSE familiar with Ireland’s most innovative vegetarian restaurant will know just how good a chef Denis Cotter is. Even the most committed carnivores salivate at the fare on offer in Café Paradiso, the restaurant he and his wife, Bridget, opened in 1993.

IT WILL be no secret to anyone that the Cork Market is one of my favourite places.