Weekend food columnist and McKenna’s Guide contributing editor Joe McNamee is back with his annual accolades. Read on for his best in fine dining, pub grub, afternoon tea and much more, in Cork and around the country.

A good restaurant does not go unnoticed for long, and the best featured in the Munster regional final of the Irish Restaurant Awards.

The Menu welcomes news of the 17th annual Knorr Student Chef of the Year competition.

Kilkenny’s Mount Juliet swept the board at Ireland’s food Oscars, with the venue taking the three top prizes at the Good Food Ireland awards.

Harvest Heaven

It’s champagne time for the country’s top chefs who made the grade in one of the most exclusive culinary and hospitality clubs in the land — the 100 Best Restaurants and 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland.

A new year and time for The Menu to don his Gypsy Rose outfit to serve up some predictions for 2013. The Menu enjoyed some memorable 2012 events: Dungarvan Food Festival, The Irish Examiner Food Festival, International Slow Food at Terra Madre in Turin and Theatre of Food at the Electric Picnic and Liss Ard Music Festival. Equally, he was heartbroken to miss Savour Kilkenny Festival and Dingle Food Festival — that will be rectified in 2013.! But the inaugural Kenmare Food Carnival was a bit special, not as multi-faceted as the aforementioned but as one of the original culinary outposts in the dark pre-food days in Ireland, KFC has all makings of a future top food attraction. www.kenmarefoodcarnival.com

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Make your Christmas a cracker with top tips from celebrity chefs, plus advice on creating the perfect festive table. Joe McNamee and Áilín Quinlan ask the experts.

Galway and Cork were the big winners at the fifth annual Good Food Ireland Awards, with Aniar Restaurant in Galway scooping the top prize.

While the pre-theatre dinner is a great boon to the restaurateurs, The Menu confesses to finding such dining to be overly rushed so is much taken with the Ballyvolane House solution, whereby the theatre comes to the diners.

There is “no recession in Irish, quality food”, according to John McKenna, author of the national food bible, The Irish Food Guide.

As several thousand happy and sated punters headed for the exits at the Irish Examiner Food Festival in Cork’s Fitzgerald Park yesterday evening, the light mist finally began to thicken, marking the end of the splendid weather that proved a vital ingredient in the tremendous success of a celebration of food and drink on Leeside.

THE relentless rain failed to dampen the spirits of food lovers who flocked to Cork’s Fitzgerald Park to whet their appetites at TasteFest.