Sally's blog

Archive - all the best places to eat, shop and stay in Ireland. A local guide to local places.

Meet The Brewer – Grainne Walsh

Grainne Walsh, Metalman Brewery

 

What inspired you to make beer?
I love beer :-) I think it's a thoroughly under-rated drink, it's often cast aside as the poorer sibling of wine, and under-appreciated in terms of the variety and complexity of flavourings that you can find in beer. What better way to try and fix this than to start making it?

Harry's Saturday Market

A wee while back we suggested that there was a Beer-Bread-Bacon revolution going on in Irish artisan food.

Visit the Saturday morning market at Harry's Restaurant at Bridgend, Donegal, and you can see that we were a wee bit right, and a whole lot wrong. Yes there is beer - thank you, Kinnegar Brewery. Yes, there is bread - thank you Slow Food Co. Yes, there is bacon - thank you Hamilton's Farm.

Happy Birthday Mrs Allen

Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe House is the most important person in the history of the Irish state.
Her fifty years of service to Irish food and hospitality makes Eamon de Valera’s twenty-odd years as Taoiseach pale in comparison, and her rigorous certainty and unwavering moral vision is unmatched by another other politician or public figure in Irish life.
In addition, the international respect she commands cannot be matched by any other Irish man or woman.

Legenderry Warehouse No. 1, Derry

If you seek the ham sandwich of your dreams, you will find it in the Legenderry Tearooms, just beside the Guildhall. Made with sublime sourdough bread, sandwiching superlative ham and fantastic cheese and chutney, it is the very definition of how to ennoble simple ingredients and make them into something special. The team here take every detail and amp it up to the max, so the vegetables and salad leaves are bursting with vitality, the crab salad with Guinness brown bread is benchmark, the soups and stews are soulful and satisfying.

Pyke'n'Pommes Food Truck, Derry

Kevin Pyke is yet another guy from the North West who is way, way ahead of the curve. Stroll down to Queens Quay, hard by the river, and you will find Pyke ‘n’ Pommes, the food truck of your dreams. As we sat in our car eating The Codfather, the Notorious P.I.G and the Legenderry Burger, there was nothing less than stupefied silence, as we all thought the same thing: how on earth can this food, which has been finished in an old British Leyland truck parked beside a river, possibly be so good? This is restaurant quality food, this is cutting-edge food, this is magnificent food.

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