A Serving of Intent

Food. I like food. I like it a lot. Burgers, pies, steak, truffle, sushi, I like it all. I probably like what I haven’t even tasted yet! That's not to say I've liked food forever; there was a time that I felt sick at the thought of pizza, all kinds of ham and, shock horror, cheese too but thankfully, those days are long since gone. As they passed, I started visiting restaurants. Many, many restaurants; Restaurants in Dublin, restaurants in New York, Stockholm, London, Edinburgh; Italian restaurants, Moroccan restaurants, restaurants that dealt in cuisine that you could only consider an invention in themselves! The list is extensive. Some I visited only once, others, like Yamamori, I seem to end up in almost daily. The importance I came to realise was that no matter where it was or how good the food, I was always accumulating, learning, consuming ‘foodie’ knowledge as I went.

Up until recently, I never felt any urge to share beyond friends anything I’d discovered along this pretty delicious culinary voyage but in 2008, a restaurant called Kitty's Bistro closed its doors. Then, in 2009, Mint of Ranelagh followed suit. The final straw was the popular Bang Café in the early months of 2010. When I saw that dreaded paper sheet in Bang’s door window I stopped and thought of all the people who had never eaten a meal in these good establishments, myself included (regretfully) when it came to Mint in particular. I decided that the only thing to do would be to start writing about them, all of them, and never stop. Leave no eatery undiscovered, no take away, food stand or greasy spoon café left unvisited lest we arrive in a month’s time and find it gone.

There are, after all, some real gems out there, fantastic places to eat in a whole spectrum of cuisines, styles and, most importantly in today's environment, affordability. My and Consumed's aim is to bring these places to YOUR attention, and hopefully, in turn, your stomachs to them! Anything I cook – successfully – will also cameo, because hey, miracles do sometimes happen and you might even end up liking a recipe or two.

We all deserve a good meal; even those condemnded to die on death row get one in the end. Very little really compares to a satisfying dining experience when you think about it. It was after all Voltaire who said that “nothing could be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity”. To be honest, I know next to nothing about Voltaire beyond that he had a pretty cool name, but I do know that he had his priorities in order when it came to food. And that, boys and girls, is all that we’re concerned about here. Food.

So to wrap it up, I really hope you enjoy Consumed in the months and hopefully years to come. I hope that you find it everything that you expect a good food blog should be and most importantly that at the end of the day, I send you in direction that's right for you.

Special thanks has to go out to my lovely girlfriend Rebecca. Without her constant prodding I'd never have started writing this. Not to mention her HTML skills which helped me get the finished banner looking like it does! She's rather multi-talented, it has to be said. I'd also like to thank my friends for their support and finally, the writings of Paulo Tullio, Angela Flannery and Lucinda O'Sullivan of the Irish Independent which have been a constant source of digest God knows how many weekends now.

Bon appetit guys!