Sally's blog

There is a service, often overlooked but massively important, which the hospitality industry provide to food producers.

Let's call it the April Bloomfield Imprimatur.
What is it? It's the discipline of a good kitchen to focus intently on the best way of... cutting up a stalk of celery. Or a carrot. Or a piece of lamb.

We call it The Blink Moment. It's that mili-second when you walk into a place and the immediate reaction of the staff determines whether you will stay or leave, whether you will have a good time, or not.
In Stonecutter's Kitchen, on the hill above Doolin village in west County Clare, they have The Blink Moment down to a fine art. They need to, because this is a busy restaurant and so, when people turn up and walk in, the chances are there won't be a vacant table.

Kilshanny House is a peach. It's everyone's idealised version of the Irish country pub, a place where everything gleams, where the courtesy and welcome are real and true, where the cooking is smart and shows its capable way around local artisan ingredients. You step in the door, take a look, and you've found a little bit of heaven,

Paul Hynes is a journeyman. Stints at L’Ecrivain, La Dolce Vita, Horetown House and Step House in Borris – with stages in Arbutus and Tom Aikens in London thrown in for good measure - have led him back to Wexford Town to take charge of his own restaurant on Custom Quay. La Côte is a lovely low-key room which looks out to the town’s fleet of mussel trawlers moored along the quayside. The look is rustic and appropriately nautical and, like every Wexford restaurant I’ve ever eaten in, service is exceptionally friendly.
 

Montys of Kathmandu has become a Dublin institution since it was opened by Shiva Gautam and his wife Lina in 1997.  It seemed to take just months before it felt like it had always been there.

The cuisine of Nepal is closely related to Northern India but there are also Chinese and Tibetan influences with lots of stir fry, Sichuan peppers and even soy sauce.  Flavours are cleaner and fresher than in most of India and spicier than in China, but it is the lightness of touch in the Monty’s cooking that I think I like most.

The best cookery books are those which are abidingly personal, books that are testaments to life's adventures. Lina Gautam's Nepalese Cookbook is one of the most delightful – and modest – examples of this valuable genre, as Ms Gautam intersperses her childhood memories of food with the great adventure for which people in Ireland know her best – the setting up of Monty's Restaurant, in Dublin's Temple Bar, with her husband, Shiva.

Enjoy superb food, raise money for the earthquake relief effort in Nepal and be in with a chance to win great prizes including dinner for two and overnight accommodation at Neven Maguire’s acclaimed MacNean House and Bistro in Blacklion, Co Cavan. Head for Smock Alley Theatre in the heart of Temple Bar in Dublin on May 24 for a night of curry, drinks and dancing being organised by three chefs.

The informal dinner is open to 100 guests and is priced at €100 per ticket, with the aim of sending at least €10,000 to Nepal through the charity Touch Ireland.

This story is meant to be read in order, if you haven't read part I then find it here.

Day 2 of our Cook's tour.

If you thought chocolate began with CDM and ended with Flake, think again. Brilliant chocolatiers are rewriting the book of what you can do with beans and bars. Sally McKenna talks to some of the key players in the melting pot of Irish chocolate.

Thanks to all the people who we spoke to for this podcast: Allison Roberts from Clonakilty Chocolate, http://clonakiltychocolate.com; Hannah and Rachel Dare from Organico Bantry, www.organico.ie, Caitlin Ruth from Deasy's Harbour Bar.