Youghal adopts new signature dish, fish pie

GALWAY has its oysters, Clonakilty its black pudding and Charleville its cheese. Now Youghal has its fish pie.

A French chef working in the east Cork town has compiled the winning recipe in a contest to establish the perpetual Gold Label Youghal Bay Fish Pie.

Seventeen restaurant services in the town entered the competition but David Ribeau ensured his employers— the Red Store bar and restaurant on North Main Street — entered the history and cookery books with a winning effort that he prepared “in about 10 minutes”.

Chef Ribeau, 36, from Burgundy, has lived in Youghal for six years. He receives a weekend for two in Dublin’s Westin Hotel as his prize.

The contest formed part of a new project aimed at marketing the town as a family-friendly tourist centre with strong links to the sea, history and food.

Belfast-born Tim Magee, a marketing consultant who settled in east Cork six years ago, first mooted the initiative at a meeting of the recently formed Youghal Concerned Citizens group.

“Youghal has the best tourism structure in the country,” he said. “We shouldn’t be focused primarily on industry but on family tourism.”

The winning recipe will be circulated to all restaurants in Youghal, and beyond if requested, to ensure a consistent, standardised, dish that it is hoped will become synonymous with the town’s name chairman Jim Flanagan said.

Adjudicator Aoife Carrigy, food critic and writer, described the winning dish as “a pie for every occasion and all tastes”.

She described it as “a lovely buttery topping that added that little bit of decadence that made you want to tuck in.”

She depicted “lots of fish mix, including salmon, white fish and smoked fish.”