Taste of Dublin Festival

As any or most Dublin foodies will know, the talk of the past four days will have been dominated by one thing and one thing only: the Taste of Dublin Festival. For the last five years it has landed itself in the Iveagh Gardens, playing host to some of the biggest names in the British and Irish celebrity chef circles, many of Dublin’s finest restaurants and innumerable food related companies from Dubliner cheese to Lindt chocolates and Aga cooking stoves. If that wasn’t enough, free entertainment in the form of fashion competitions, barber shop quartets and live music are all thrown in as part of the package. It’s a literal day at the races, minus any horses! Which – given it’s supposed to be all about food - I’m glad is the case.

This year’s festival was particularly significant given that it was my first outright Taste of Dublin experience. Yup, shameful for somebody who calls themselves a Dublin foodie! The truth is that I’ve only started to properly stick my head into the city’s food scene since starting up Consumed, so whatever happened afterwards was always going to be a series of adventures into unexplored territory. What a difference a blog makes, eh?

I’d bought two Taste of Dublin tickets each for myself and Rebecca; one set for the early opening on Friday and the second for Saturday evening (each ticket cost roughly forty euro, but this included twenty Euro worth of ‘florins’ to spend at the festival). I figured that this would be the best way to see what difference the weekend made to it all, as well as just varying the overall experience. A visit on Sunday had been part of the original plan since my old classmate and fellow blogger Donal Skehan was doing a demonstration at the event, but a few whispers about the food petering out by then and - more importantly – my holidays ending on Saturday meant that this idea quickly flew out the window.

So it was that by half twelve on Friday, give or take a small bank balance disaster, Rebecca and I strolled past a handful of bouncers and into the almost unrecognisable Iveagh Gardens. Knowing little to nothing about the layout I’d expected it to be centred mostly around the middle of the park but you literally could not walk anywhere without coming face to face with a pavilion of some kind.

Not that I was complaining, we immediately launched toward the first row we saw and grabbed every last morsel of complimentary food we could beg for, borrow or steal! There was plenty to choose from; Tropicana, Green & Blacks chocolate, spiced hams, Dubliner cheese, Prosecco, smoked salmon and many, many more. The best part was, of course, that given the volume of people passing by, it was easy enough to do a lap and shamelessly gobble up a second helping of each one! Rebecca summed it up perfectly in pointing out on our seventh time around that having a cup of Tropicana was like collecting out €200 on passing ‘Go’.

There was also plenty of food available to buy. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to say that the majority of bites on offer would have cost you! Nearly every second stall represented one of Dublin’s restaurants or cafés, amongst which you could find Roly’s Bistro, Jaipur, the comparatively new Salon de Saveurs and Town Bar and Grill.

All in all, nearly twenty restaurants were represented with backup from several food companies and associations also producing their own dishes. Over the course of two days Rebecca and I had a chance to sample a wide range of what was being catered, the highlights of which for me were Jaipur’s Tawa Gosht (slow cooked lamb with aniseed and curry leaved griddled in a light onion and tomato masala) and Bramble’s beer battered fish and chips with a minted mushy peas. I even got a photo of my dish from Salon de Saveurs with Conrad Gallagher himself!

Whilst the food itself was delicious, the prices being charged for each individual helping were just appalling. One florin equates to one Euro, and many of the signature main dishes hit the seven or eight florin mark, despite information about the festival claiming that the average price of the dishes on offer would be just five. Many that you did actually pay five for turned out to be little more than a small plastic cupful of strawberries and cream. In a nutshell, genuine bargains were practically nonexistent. Given, many of the restaurants are well reputed in and about the Dublin food scene but rational thinking would dictate that to promote the food you cook and entice diners into your restaurant proper, you would offer a proportionately better or discounted price. This is particularly relevant to a festival environment where you would expect the emphasis to be on creating a more inclusive experience. I don’t even need to begin talking about how the ‘R’ word should also be playing on the minds of whoever deems such ludicrous prices suitable. To put it another, simpler way, it felt like paying to get into a music festival but then being made to pay five euro every time a band played a song.

Thankfully and as you’d expect, the cooking presentations were, for the most part, free. We were lucky enough to squeeze into a presentation by the notorious Gino D’Acampo who spent as much time flirting with his army of female fans as he did cooking!

The end result was a pesto tagliatelle, tiramisu and plenty of culinary innuendo. For both lack of time and the difference in the number of people attending on Saturday we didn’t stay around long enough to watch a second presentation. It was however truly remarkable to witness not even the slightest let up in how quickly the food was being served, despite the park being about three times busier by my estimation!

Ultimately, I learned three things from my two-day visit to the Taste of Dublin Festival. The first two were very simple lessons: only buy tickets for one day and don’t make assumptions about how holiday pay is dispersed! The third, unfortunately, is far more serious and in all honesty, upsetting to think about. Taste of Dublin is advertised not only as the definitive food festival of this fair city, but also as ‘the world’s greatest restaurant festival’, or so claims the official website. The latter is a bit dubious and you all no doubt will agree but regardless, it’s puts out there as the gathering that should define interest in Irish food both as a pleasure and business. Indeed, food is something that unifies everybody in a fundamental way given that it’s something that everybody must and will experience throughout their entire lives. Despite all of this, the only feeling I got in walking around the grounds of Iveagh Gardens for those two days was one of threatening exclusivity. The stocky bouncers siphoning you into lines at the gateway; the well dressed socialites proudly displaying their ‘VIP’ tags; the shockingly overpriced cups of strawberries and cream; all of this drags the implied idea behind the festival kicking and screaming into the background where it becomes little more than an accessory to a fashionable outing.

Think for a moment of any decent food market or street festival you’ve been to. What defined them? For me, it’s low prices, fresh and good food, great smells, lively atmosphere and a generally all inclusive feel. Taste of Dublin features only one of those qualities, which itself is mired in the issue of cost. The atmosphere is stiff and the smells of any actual cooking are sealed in by screens and tarps, lest the festival-goers be exposed to the visual horror of somebody working a stove. What summed it all up in spectacular irony was that the guys manning the Donnybrook Fair stall handed us a Eton mess cup (five florins) on the sly which, had you bought the ingredients in their shop, would probably have set you back less than a euro. They understood, and looked to be trying to make as much of a laugh of it they could.

To summarise, the food on offer at Taste of Dublin was everything it ought to be and delicious. The presentations were fun and the weather played ball which made walking around during the quieter hours a pleasant experience. On a whole, the festival itself felt more like a celebration of food elitism, with less attention given to the former. It typified the refusal of certain castes within Dublin city to acknowledge how things have changed since the early noughties, and that the exclusivity associated with eating out has been somewhat broken down over the past twenty years. I’d definitely attend again based on the fact that I try to keep up with Dublin’s dining scene and write about it, but my advice to anybody with a just a casual interest in food would be to stay well away and visit one of Dublin’s weekend marketplaces instead. They’re cheaper, friendlier, and unequivocally aimed at food lovers.

Taste of Dublin Festival
June 10th - 13th,
Iveagh Gardens,
Clonmel Street,
Dublin 2

http://www.tastefestivals.ie

Free Burrito Day at Boojum Fresh Mexican

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of being amongst Boojum's first customers. They arrived without so much as a whisper on the Millennium Walk, serving up burritos on the spot and other Mexican fare in keeping with the 'fast casual' style of catering that the US is so familiar with. The emphasis was squarely on fresh ingredients, and everything was made from scratch on the premises (for more info, check out the full review!). Roll on today and they've proven and instant hit with the everyday Dubliner, thanks in no small part I'm sure to yet another well run Facebook advertising campaign. Frozen mojito machines have been added, and in general it's looking like Boojum have established the benchmark for any other stop and go Mexican eatery looking to locate in Dublin's fair city.

That said, I'm pleased to announce that tomorrow, Boojum will be promoting themselves in the best way possible by offering everybody a free burrito. All day long. There's no catch, and you even have a choice between a normal burrito or fajita burrito! Service will begin at noon but at three o'clock there'll be a two hour break for the staff to regroup and tidy. After that, they're open 'til seven so there's plenty of time to stop in. And lets be honest, when there's an offer like this available then you have absolutely no reason not to.

See you all there, and lets do our best to keep the riots at a bare minimum!

Boojum Fresh Mexican
New Millennium Walkway,
Dublin 1

Tph: 01-8788152

http://www.boojummex.com/

Irish Food Bloggers Event, Bord Bia

A few weeks ago, Donal Skehan of the Good Mood Food Blog decided to update his blogroll. He was aiming to create a list of the most regularly updated Irish food blogs; something that I hadn’t as of then come across in any of the internet’s many corners. If that wasn’t enough, he also planned - with the help of Bord Bia – an ‘event’ to facilitate this update that would see a whole host of the aforementioned Irish food bloggers gathered in one place for a gastronomic chat, iPhone frenzy, Twitter-thon and all of the inbetweens! Luckily, I caught wind of all this early on and managed to secure an invite, despite only being just three months into the whole food bloggery (my new favourite word!) lark. Roll on an incredibly humid Thursday and there I was, rubbing shoulders with around thirty other bloggers from various counties in Ireland and even a handful who hailed from overseas! Some, like me, were new and a few others were altogether seasoned (no pun intended, but I might as well...) but nearly all of us had never experienced something like this before.

Of course, to just stick a group of food bloggers into a room and let everything develop organically from there would have been far too much of a comical disaster waiting to happen, so an afternoon’s worth of entertainment and foodie showmanship had been arranged to keep all of our minds busy. Kicking off the festivities was Bord Bia’s Maeve Desmond to welcome everybody who had arrived on time, ie not me. Five minutes later (plus my own personal nametag!) and I got in just in time to catch the start of David Owen of Bord Bia’s meat department’s presentation on Irish pork.

Speaking of which, as part of the buildup to the event, Bord Bia kindly arranged for several pork packs to be distributed to quite a number of the bloggers in attendance. This was all in light of an ongoing promotional drive of Irish pork products by Bord Bia, the reputation of which has suffered in recent years due to a largely isolated hiccup in 2008. Rest assured, the pork that was delivered to my door was quite possibly some of the best meat I’ve ever tasted. It also did nothing to help dispel Irish stereotypes given that it was signed for and taken by Rebecca (proper Cockerney luv!) from a farmer wearing none other than a straw hat! In the end we used it to made two dishes: roasted pork with homemade colcannon and apple sauce, and sweet and sour pork with udon noodles. I wasn’t entirely happy with either recipe at the time so neither have featured on the blog, but after tasting meat that delicious you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be giving it another whirl in the not too distant future!

So, the recurring theme of the day quickly turned out to be a porky one. Well, after Lorraine Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads had taken her turn at demonstrating some vegetarian cooking for us that is. She was kind enough to take time out of what I’m sure is a hectic schedule to give pointers on baking spelt soda bread and how to create a quick and simple miso pesto tagliatelle dish that was just as quickly gobbled up by everyone in attendance!

Following shortly afterwards was a presentation by master butcher Pat Conway of GMIT who provided the best tagline of the afternoon: ‘and if Maeve will allow me the time!’ with regards to everything, anything he sought to do.

An entertainer in the making if not already a skilled butcher, Pat explained in precise detail the ins and outs of preparing your very own sausages, loin and shoulder of pork with not one piece of meat spared. The lovely Maire Dufficy then proceeded to rustle up a plethora of dishes using similar cuts of meat, also introducing pork belly and mince into the mix.

The best tip we picked up along the way? Don’t annoy your local butcher by only having him mince a small amount of pork for you at once, their mincing machine will have to be cleaned out afterwards.

A quick networking tips and pointers session for Damien Mulley led us into lunch, which, as you may have guessed, featured plenty of delicious pork loin and belly cuts with the added bonus of a very light cheesecake for dessert! Of course, nobody touched the food for a good five minutes for the sake of photography; it’s nice to know I’m not alone in eating most of my meals lukewarm.

Time constraints meant that advice from Eoin Purcell about developing your blog into other forms of media had to be delivered at the same time as the cheesecake, whilst the following hour or thereabouts was dedicated entirely to the professional food styling of Jacosta Clarke and Erica Ryan. Altogether they provided some fantastic tips but reading through my fellow bloggers’ pages does nothing but suggest that anybody actually needed them!

What followed was probably the last thing anyone with the slightest ounce of common sense should have done: left a mountain of culinary freebies for a gaggle of food bloggers to consume. To sum it up, I walked off with a bush of rosemary in hand, cheese in a folder and smoked trout in my pocket. There were delightful oat biscuits courtesy of Lilly Higgins, a great range of Good4U produce, herbal tea and even shredded, dried beef by a company called Biltong; the closest thing I’ve seen to American beef jerky on this side of the Atlantic! Let’s put it this way: I ended up with wrist cramp at having to figure out the best way to carry my plunder up Nassau Street.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend time chatting to my fellow food bloggers before leaving, no. I met some great people there from all kinds of different backgrounds, many of them named Aoife coincidentally! To actually put a face to some of the Irish blogs I’d already seen was a big thrill, and to discover new ones even better. If I learned anything from the group, it’s that many felt exactly the same way about the recipes they post as I do: worry over whether or not it’s good enough. At the end of the day however, what I see on their blogs consistently looks and sounds fantastic so I guess the right attitude to adopt is to put yourself in everybody else’s shoes and imagine they think the same about your own work; it’s probably the truth! Either way, only good things can come of us networking between each other, especially for me given I’m always on the lookout for dining buddies. I managed to catch up with Donal briefly as well, who’s midway through writing his second cookbook at this stage.

All in all, the food bloggers event was a massive success and a great experience for everyone involved. Maeve, Donal and Klara Golez of Bord Bia did a fantastic job at arranging the entire event, so a huge thank you goes out to them from myself and Consumed. Apart from that, all I have to say (or ask, rather!) is when’ll the next one be? And count me in.

One minor note to finish up with: check out my blogroll. Just do it. You’ll see it now contains virtually all of the blogs listed on Donal’s update. Like he says, us foodies have to stick together!

Taste of Ranelagh Festival

It may have taken a bus journey from Ashbourne, a brand new coat for Rebecca and a borrowed umbrella to combat the wettest day in several weeks, but the destination made our travels on Sunday more than worthwhile. That’s right, it was time for the very first ever Taste of Ranelagh Festival! And, in fact, my first visit to a food festival in Dublin outright. Bearing this in mind, writing about one is something I’ve never done before, so I apologise in advance if I’m a little shaky on the details or mechanical in describing it all (and for the delay, my laptop died a death during the week and I amn’t typing this out on my phone). Of course, another way of looking at it is as a practice run for the Taste of Dublin Festival in June! Regardless, it was an excellent start to what looks sure to become another great addition to Dublin’s growing food scene.

Of course – as any of you have no doubt heard me say a few times before – Ranelagh is already something of a foodie’s dream on the best of weekends. Restaurants, delicatessens, the Ranelagh Village market; all of these things make it worth visiting day and night, nearly 24/7. To cope with the extra volume on Sunday, a marquee was drafted in and set up next to the village market itself. Hand in glove almost, as the crowd spilling out would immediately be greeted by stalls of fresh fruit, vegetables and a range of cakes still warm from the oven. That's only to name a select few as well.

Speaking of the crowd, it completely exceeded my and everyone else’s expectations. Vastly so! The festival began at twelve, an within an hour the line to get into the marquee for just a handful of bite-size tasters from each restaurant involved was already stretching out onto the street. Roll on another two hours (not to mention handful of showers that drove off quite a few of the colder foodies!) and it was still a battle to get inside, never mind jostling for the food itself.

On offer were several bite size dishes from some of Ranelagh’s more popular restaurants, and one or two of the lesser known ones. The biggest name in the marquee was Tribeca, who served up a rather wholesome West African chicken curry. Immediately afterwards you were hit with a one-two of chicken biryani from Punjab Balti, and a refreshing bar larb gai salad by Diep Noodle Bar’s chef.

The larb gai in particular stood out; minced chicken with lemongrass, select spices, scallion and rice, each portion served in a leaf of iceberg lettuce. The chicken biryani, meanwhile, came accompanied by a delightful raita that turned a dish I’d normally avoid into a fantastic and creamy affair.

Also on offer was pizza from Antica Veniza, Paula Coyne’s sumptuous cupcakes and fresh smoked salmon with miniature blinis provided by the village market’s seafood stall. Cocktails were also provided by a handful of nearby pubs, and even the local Spar chipped in with their own stand, serving wine and various nibbles. Despite the wait involved, it was an all round entertaining as everybody involved was keen to show off exactly what they could do, and how the visitors themselves could do it as well!

In addition to the food on demand, those who survived the line to get any were – if also lucky enough to retain a seat at the marquee’s end – treated to several cooking demonstrations that included home-made ravioli by the fantastically named Marco and Paulo of Pinocchio restaurant, and Indian cooking at the hands of Punjab Balti. Because of the crowd build-up we decided only to stay for only the first. This, however, may or may not be an excuse to cover up the fact that we left the tent without realising that skipping the queue to get back in wouldn’t exactly have looked very good, but I stand by it. Regardless, we did get to vote in a competition to decide on Ranelagh’s best restaurant, chef and individual dish presented at the festival. The latter two awards went to Diep Noodle Bar, while the former is still a mystery to me. Put that down to bad food journalism on my part, but like I said this is my first time at writing about a food festival.

At the end of the day, my only disappointment was that the Gourmet Burger Company – who were billed on the event’s website – were a mysterious no-show. Either that or the marquee proved too small to accommodate everybody at the same time and we just weren’t around for long enough to see them! But given how much of a draw the event turned out to be, I’ve no doubt that the scale of it can be expanded upon next year. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have a little more experience at writing about festivals too. For now though, that's one down and any number to go; the summer is still young and there's plenty of eating left to do folks!

Taste of Ranelagh Festival Preview

I said it at the beginning, in that little 'about me' paragraph to the right and I will say it again: this blog is as much about my own foodie learning experience as it is yours, if indeed those of you who read it have any learning left to do! I make no pretences to being able to cook effortlessly, and I have a long way to go in terms of exploring the rich tapestry of Dublin's epicurean scene. Food festivals, and my lack of attendance therein, fall firmly into the latter shortcoming. With embarrassment, I'll admit I've never actually been to one in Ireland yet! Markets; yes. Events in other countries; a few times. But never one of Dublin's numerous foodie festivals. Why, you ask? Because I never actually took the time to check and see if I could find out when and where they took place.

Fortunately, a lot has changed. Lazy Rob has jumped out of a skyscraper window and what's left is an excited young man, a little bit more up to speed with what's in the pipeline and eagerly awaiting his first food festival experience. Which, coincidentally, is coming up tomorrow.

Yes, it's back to the proverbial restaurant Mecca that is Ranelagh once again! Only on this occasion, they're all coming together for the Taste of Ranelagh Festival. For the first time ever, the combined forces of over fifteen local restaurants, shops and the Ranelagh village market throw what's described as a 'complimentary taste experience', designed to showcase what each of them can do and draw in prospective eaters. There'll be food, drink, cooking demonstrations and a voting competition to select the outright restaurant, dish and cocktail of the year. It's a wonderful collaboration, the best part of which is that it's entirely free!

Considering that Ranelagh village is, on the nicest of weekends, a must visit for any Dublin foodie, the Taste of Ranelagh Festival is an absolute no-brainer. It's also an ideal starter to the eventual main that is the Taste of Dublin Festival. So, if you have the Sunday off and fancy a culinary experience to knock you off your feet then swing by; it's only a Luas journey away.

Taste of Ranelagh Festival
Ranelagh Village Market Marquee,
Ranelagh Village,
Dublin 6

http://www.tasteofranelagh.ie/

Taste of Dublin Festival Preview

It's the one event of the year that every Dublin foodie should have penned in on their calendar: the Taste of Dublin Festival. Now in its fifth year, you'll find it held annually for several days in June at one of the city's most picturesque locations, the Iveagh Gardens. What normally is one of Dublin's more quiet and secluded parks will, for four days, play host to a collection of the most exciting chefs in Ireland, over fifteen restaurant teams, inumerable Irish food exhibitions and up to thirty-thousand hungry Dubliners. This year's festival will in particular will be my first ever (assuming I get the time off work, that is) and also something of a mini school reunion since an old classmate of mine, Donal Skehan of the Good Mood Food Blog, will be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dorina Allen and Neven Maguire in the chef demonstration pot! To say that I'm excited is an understatement, and with a good summer predicted it's bound to be a blowout.

The festival runs from the 10th through 13th of June and tickets are now availalable, handily coming in three categories to suit your wallet; standard, premium or VIP. Purchasing premium upward will also grant you twenty florins, a Taste Festival currency which can be used to buy the various dishes on offer, the average price of which is six florins or thereabouts. Come with money to spare, bring your cookbooks for autographs and most importantly, don't spoil your appetite!

Taste of Dublin Festival
June 10th - 13th,
Iveagh Gardens,
Clonmel Street,
Dublin 2

Tph hotline for ticket bookings: 0818-30-00-30

http://www.tastefestivals.ie