Sally's blog

In this issue of our podcast, Takeaway, John McKenna interviews investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman, and talks about her new book Swallow This.

Read other stories in Megabites...

We have been delighted all week by the response to our three new Apps. Here are some of the comments and tweets:

"Are you always trying to figure out where the best places to eat, drink, shop & stay in Ireland? Download @McKennasGuides new Apps #100Best" @CulinarianPress

"Congratulations to All those who made the #100Best list this year in @McKennasGuides. What an achievement!" @barryathartes

"@McKennasGuides @ConorC #apptastic literally everything you need to know at the touch of a button #greatidea" @LisaReganPR

One of the comments this week, about Eat 2015, our new 100 Best Restaurant App, that really made us laugh, was a Facebook status saying the writer was going to open a new takeaway in order to get into the #100Best and call it Bacon Bad.

With a name like that, we'd certainly give it a second glance, but for a takeaway, a food cart, a hostel, or a shack to get into the #100Best, you need to be more than a little bit special.

In his short book, In Praise of Shadows, the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki writes that “It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music...”.
In Miyazaki, a small, handsome room with half-a-dozen stools on Evergreen Street in Cork, Takashi Miyazaki is cooking Japanese food that summons the silent music. His cooking is beautiful to look at, and worthy of profound meditation. Above all, however, it is food to be eaten.

Nothing can resist change. Taking the Luas out to Sandyford to have dinner at the China Sichuan, there was not a single person reading a printed newspaper or magazine or book in the two carriages I could see.
But, then, as people began to leave the train, I spotted a European man reading a tiny, missal-like tome. And what book was he reading?
Of course: it was Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. The tedious and deflating personal story of the man who switched the world to screens.
More change was ahead of us.

The thing about Hop-House is that you keep looking over your shoulder whenever you come here.
Somewhere in here, you say to yourself, maybe from behind the bar, maybe from behind the dessert counter, you just know that Harrison Ford is waiting to burst out and finish that missing scene from Bladerunner. And that girl over there, why she looks a bit like Daryl Hannah...
That's the thing about Hop-House. Imagine a future where the Irish pub is gridded with a Korean eating house, and it will be this madcap, unique place.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 Irish Responsible Tourism Awards, which were announced this week in Dublin.
There were eight category winners, with Food Initiative awards going to Archways B&B in Co Wexford (Gold) and Burren Smokehouse and Orchard Acre Farm (Silver).
Overall winner of the awards was Atlantic Sea Kayaking, run by Jim and Maria Kennedy in West Cork.

"Kei Pilz cooks with the stern eye of an artist, a calling beautifully matched to the intricate presentations which Japanese food demands. Each plate deserves to be Polaroided into posterity before you carefully dissect the concordance of tastes which this food offers."

Radical guides to Irish food from McKennas' Guides....

Download details here...

Read other articles in Megabites...

Takeaway - a new podcast from McKennas' Guides. In this first issue, we look at the night that all restaurateurs seem to dread.

Thanks to:

Caitlin Ruth,  Deasy's Harbour Bar and Restaurant

Paul Flynn  The Tannery

Donal Doherty Harry's Bar & Restaurant

Jp McMahon, Eat Galway