Sally's blog

Martin Shanahan is back on our RTE screens this evening, with the eight-part series “Martin's still Mad About Fish”.

Inishfood began with the outrageous idea that you could hold back the impending snow and sleet and serve pizzas -outside - in Donegal, to forty or fifty people, cooked by an amateur chef from his home-built garden oven.

How could that possibly work? It couldn't. Could it?

Limerick people will know this place, it’s been there forever, on Clancy’s Strand with the best views of the river Shannon and King John’s Castle. Given that it’s always been there I’d never been there, because that’s how things go. I’d heard about their new menu, good home-style food so it was tine to give it a look and a taste. I bought my own personl Michael Winner and AA Gill along for the food, that’s my two boys who are already much taller than I, must be all that grub.

The Salty Dog, Bangor, County Down

Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland 2011

There are 17 new entries in the “2011 Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants” and, in alphabetical order, they are:  

Augustine’s (City Quarter, Cork)

Bar No. 8 (Dock Road, Galway)

The Brown Bear (Naas, Co. Kildare)

China Sichuan (Sandyford, Dublin)

Deasy’s Harbour Bar (Clonakilty, West Cork)

The Exchequer (Exchequer Street, Dublin)

Global Village (Dingle, Co. Kerry)

Juno’s (Parkgate Street, Dublin)

Mad Fish (Crosshaven, Co. Cork)

Manifesto (Rathmines, Dublin)

The 2011 editions of the Bridgestone 100 Best guides are the twentieth editions of the books. Twenty editions! But 1992 was only... Twenty editions ago. Blimey!

The narrative of the twenty editions is a simple one: continual, gradual, steady, inexorable improvement, right throughout the country.

We asked our Twitter friends to send us a phone pic of their Xmas table and here are some of the photos. Rest your mouse on any of the pictures, and you’ll see the name of the phototweeter. Most of you appear to be traditionalists, from Sadie Cobbe’s (@rorycobbe) lovely floral centrepiece, to Artisanchutney’s claret decanters, to Gar Geogh’s Christmas Tree settings. Babaduck71 provided a lovely minimalist contrast, and was one of the few tables that didn’t feature crackers.

My County, My Cooking

Artisan of the Year: Anna Leveque, Triskel Farmhouse Cheeses, Portlaw, County Waterford

We all have our own Christmas traditions and the taste for tradition begins very young. No-one is more nostalgic about how you carry out Christmas than children. In our home it begins with decorating the tree, playing Phil Spector's Christmas album, and - always - drinking orange miel, warmed freshly squeezed orange juice, sweetened with honey. We asked our twitter comrades to tweet their own twaditions. Here are their heart warming stories:

Music, Mass and Christmas Preparation