Sally's blog

Walter Ryan-Purcell is, along with 37 other West Cork families, the creator of the Fresh from West Cork stall at the English Market in Cork City. FFWC brings the great foods from the jewel of the county to the county capital.

Read more articles in Megabites...

Are you finding that you still have the January blues, even though we're in February?

Here's a cure for the blues. Get in the car. Drive to Kilrush in south County Clare. Walk into Considine's Bakery on big, wide Francis Street in the centre of the town. Talk to the staff. Talk to the bakers. Ask to have a look at their lovely ovens and gear. Buy some bread – lots of bread. Say farewell. Promise to return.

You're feeling better already, and you haven't left Kilrush, never mind having eaten some of the bread. When you do get to taste the bread, you will feel even better.

Tuesday night in Dublin at 9pm, and you can barely swing a cat in the snappily titled ETTO on Merrion Place - we are lucky to get a table tonight.

The ETTO menu offers bar snacks and nibbles all priced under €5, some charcuterie at €7 and then small plates at between €10.00 and €11.00 and it's mostly from these we choose, though I do add in a large plate of lamb neck for myself, an act of spectacularly well chosen gluttony that I don't regret. A good bottle of New World Riesling from a very interesting list gets us settled.

I’d wager more people have been to the Kildare Village Outlet centre than have been to Kildare town, which is a shame.

A better reason to go to Kildare town would be to have a meal at Harte’s Bar and Grill. Harte’s is the flagship business of Paul Lenehan and Ronan Kinsella and their head chef, Barry Liscombe, leads a kitchen that is firing out food so good it is drawing diners down from Dublin in droves.

Kelly's Cafe at the Drinagh Roundabout on the edge of town, part of a Meadows and Byrne store is an immaculate space - huge, it has to be said - with the signature Kelly's attention to detail in the gleaming fit out: polished white tiles, marble counter tops, marine blue lampshades, lots of timber, blue leather banquettes and a great pizza oven.

“Rising from the side of a busy road just beyond Inch beach, is the wonderland that is Lorna Tyther’s baby. Pull in and park your car and you’ll soon forget about everything in the outside world.”

Kai and Lee Ronan are doing it right at their lovely fish shop on Wexford Street in New Ross. This spotless shop might have the appearance of being brand new but this is a forty year old business with a history of supplying fish to some of the best restaurants and hotels in the South East: take a trip to the newly Michelin-starred Lady Helen room in Mount Juliet and it's Ronan's fish you'll be eating - the business is one of Mount Juliet's oldest suppliers.

Dubliners get fractious when people from Cork commiserate with them about living in the so-called “capital” city, when the true capital of Ireland – as everyone knows – is actually wrapped in and around the over-flowing banks of the River Lee.

Feeling patronised, Dubliners tend to retort that they have so much more on their doorstep than Cork. To which Cork people reply: never mind the quantity, feel the quality, boy.

Thanks to you, we reckon we have found the BEST SANDWICH IN DUBLIN!
http://www.guides.ie/megabites/bestsandwichindublin-1

EDITOR'S AWARDS

Aoife Cox has been whistling up the kefir, the kombucha and the kim chi, all thanks to the inspirational Sandor Katz.
http://www.guides.ie/megabites/aoife-cox-has-been-whistling-kefir-kombuc...

Almost twenty five years ago, Kevin and Muriel Thornton opened the doors of a small room in Upper Rathmines that they called The Wine Epergne. The style of the room suggested a private men's club, but the cooking was pure punk: right from the off, Thornton's was iconoclastic.