Sally's blog

Many food lovers will be hunting down the culinary hot shots of Ireland as they tour the country on their summer vacations, heading to great new places like Westport's The Idle Wall and Dingle's idas, just two of the hot spots we have covered in previous editions of Megabites.
This time, however, we want to let you in on ten little holiday secrets, lesser-known rooms, from little bakeries to quiet cafés, whose food will delight you. All of them are special, and will make your travels memorable.

WEST CORK

The Vac-Pac: The machine your business can't afford not to have

Every Chef can cook. Not every Chef can make money.

That’s a fact.

Whatever you think about just how Neil Young's new record – The Monsanto Years – figures in his huge catalogue – one of the good ones; one of the not-so-good ones; one of the interesting failures; one of the ones Neil just didn't spend enough time on – there is an important secondary factor to the record that makes it valuable: it is a protest album fair and square, on behalf of agriculture and the culture of farming, and dead against corporate agri-business.

Remember the dish: Celeriac baked in barley and fermented hay with cured and smoked celeriac.
That is the dish with which Ireland's Mark Moriarty, of the Culinary Counter, won the San Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year Award, edging out Norway's Christian Pettersen and Peru's Maria Jose Jordan.

The places where people meet to discuss and enjoy food are getting more and more diverse and interesting. The Ballymaloe Lit Fest is a now world-renowned festival of food, and exciting times are ahead this autumn with the launch of Food on the Edge.

One of the most interesting food events, that we've been privileged to be involved in since its inception is Theatre of Food, which, thanks to the draw of Electric Picnic, has always been an event that brings in Ireland's elite food specialists.

Drive all the way from Cork to Belfast for the inaugural ABV Fest? When the pints are coming from all over Ireland, the UK and Europe, being served in a historic venue and the whole thing has been set up by four energetic craft beer lovers – Felicia Matheson of Prohibition Drinks, Darren Nugent from Pokertree Brewing Company, Boundary Brewing’s Matthew Dick and photographer Michael Kerry – that's a proposition that's hard to resist.

This is the first in a little mini-series about kitchen mechanics. The machines we use, their function, and just how much we have come to rely on them. From Water baths and Thermomixes to Blow torches and Vac Pacs i’ll have an insight into their inner workings and the benefits they bring to a professional kitchen.

47 Patrick Street in Waterford has seen quite a few restaurant iterations over the past three years, and it’s a challenge for any restaurateur to take over a space occupied previously by someone who was doing completely different food to what you might have in mind.
I almost made the mistake of leaving Momo on the long finger, waiting to see would it last, but when I heard encouraging noises from a few different sources I decided it was time to pay a visit.

Street food and pop ups are right where it's at at the moment and Lizzy’s Little Kitchen Pop Up, on the Main Street in Ballybunion, County Kerry has successfully melded the two, creating the latest jewel in the Kingdom.

Fingal Ferguson of the Gubbeen Smokehouse, near Schull in West Cork, has encountered the perennial problem of not being able to source enough high quality pork to meet the ever-growing demand for his range of bacon, sausages and charcuterie. Gubbeen Farm itself is limited in the number of animals they can rear, and the opening of their expanded smokehouse has made it necessary to buy in pork from other local farmers.