Joe McNamee rounds up all the latest news from the food world.

It has always amazed The Menu how we Gaels managed to lose the taste for oysters, once a staple of the national diet ever before the arrival of the potato to these shores, but lose it we did and only now are we beginning to renew acquaintance with the truly glorious bivalve, produced here to a truly world class level.

TouRRoir (April 23/24) is this year hosted by Good Food Ireland and the Galway-based event, a cross-sector global forum on Food Tourism & Culture, will coincide with Galway’s designation as European Region of Gastronomy.

Food news with Joe McNamee

Welcome to Part II of The Munchies 2017, in which The Menu salutes some of the heroes and achievements of the culinary calendar.

Neidín is on extra rations for he is going to have to hightail it west next week bearing his most corpulent master to the truly wonderful location of The Burren, in Co Clare, for the 11th Burren Slow Food Festival (May 12-14) where this year’s focus is very firmly on Irish Raw Milk Cheeses and Irish Gins. 

Peter Mulryan will give a day long Gin Distilling Workshop at the West Waterford Festival of Food which takes place next weekend (April 21-23).

Any fundraising initiative supporting the ISPCC and Childline will always have The Menu’s support but one that introduces a spot of baking to the equation is especially commendable. 

The Menu is, naturally, swathed in green this weekend, raising a glass to the Oul’ Sod and all who eat in her, recalling another splendid celebration of fine Irish produce and producers last week in Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud for the Irish Food Writers’ Guild’s annual awards beano. 

 

The Menu has always found Castletownshend in West Cork an intriguing spot and relishes the prospect of an evening there for some fine dining courtesy of one of his most beloved chefs, Caitlin Ruth, of Deasy’s Harbour Bar & Restaurant.

Catex — Ireland’s largest food service and hospitality exhibition — returns once more to Dublin’s RDS, on February 21-23. 

The Menu’s annual accolades saluting the people and achievements that stood out in Ireland’s culinary calendar in 2016.

Food news with Joe McNamee.

Betimes, The Menu is inclined to think there are more food awards than actual foodstuffs, so great has their proliferation become in recent years, but The Irish Food Writers’ Guild Community Food Awards remain exceptional and above criticism in his eyes. 

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. 

The Taste of West Cork (September 9-18) food festival is in full flight and The Menu shall be up to his oxters in same. 

Should you be looking for The Menu in the coming weeks then he shall mostly be found atop Neidín, roaming the wonderful wilds of West Cork with a knife in his belt and a skillet on his back for the Taste of West Cork Food Festival (Sept 9-18).

He shall cover it in more detail next week but The Menu can hardly contain himself at the prospect of the imminent Taste of West Cork food festival (September 9-18) with over 170 events taking place in 32 towns and villages and eight islands across the West Cork region.

The Menu has long been meaning to make mention of the wonderful little Garden Café, sited in a Victorian glasshouse perched just above the heart of Blackpool, and a wonderful combination of pop-up supper and photo exhibition has given him ample reason to do so. 

Part II of The Munchies 2015, The Menu’s annual accolades saluting the people and achievements that stood out in Ireland’s culinary calendar over the past 12 months.

Fáilte Ireland has launched the Irish leg of the 7th EU Eden project, promoting sustainable tourism across Europe with this year’s theme Tourism and Local Gastronomy.