The original idea was simple: Try to do something different, something that celebrates the restaurant world in a new, more relevant and entertaining way, awards from the ground up but it took a whole decade to become a reality.

How time passes when you’re having fun. And time has certainly passed for the 11-year-old West Waterford Festival of Food 2018 (April 20-22), an event at which The Menu has, in years gone by, put away more fun than a clown school on nitrous oxide.

Just weeks ago, The Menu remedied a grave ill of his own contrivance and returned to Belfast after an absence of two decades and more.