"IT USED to be that people went to France or Italy on holiday because they wanted food that was better than they could get at home," says John Desmond of the Island Cottage on Hare Island, Co Cork. "Today people are more likely to come home saying that the food is better in Ireland."
Suddenly there is a new style of Irish cooking as refreshing, creative and exciting in food terms as the Irish music, dance, writing and film being celebrated across the world. Europeans are getting excited about Irish smoked eel and pig's blood and barley - Clonakilty black pudding to you and me. Ireland is supplying France with ready prepared mussels, Spain with light lambs, the massive Indian middle class with Kelly's Irish Cream and Italy with tons of mozzarella, of all things.
On June 11th, 300 buyers representing an international A list of food retailers from several continents will converge on the RDS in Dublin to taste, celebrate and sign contracts for huge amounts of the best Irish food. They will be attending IFEX 96, the largest food and drink trade exhibition ever staged in Ireland.
Germany's largest and third largest supermarket chains, Spar and Tengelman, will be there, along with Italy's largest retail chain, Co op Italia. El Corte Ingles, regarded as the Harrods of Spain and Continente, another huge Spanish chain, have accepted invitations. From Canada, there'll be Safeway and Sobeys. The US is sending Star Markets and A&P (as familiar to Americans as Quinnsworth is over here). British retail giants will include Tesco, Sainsbury, Safeway, Asda and Marks and Spencers.
These are among the key players whom the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, needs to impress if he is to meet his goal of increasing Irish food exports from £8 billion to £12 billion within the next five years.
The showpiece of the Horizons section of events, which has been organised by An Bord Bia, will be a cook off by six top Irish chefs, competing to create the most appealing Irish menu from traditional Irish ingredients. The six (profiled below with their menus) were picked from an original 200 entries and are among the country's most inventive cooks.
The idea behind the contest, says Georgina O'Sullivan of An Bord Bia, is that Ireland can sell significantly more Irish food abroad only if Ireland can create identifiable Irish cuisine. Europeans love Irish food and associate Ireland with fresh, natural green" produce - but they don't think of us as cooks. We need to show them fresh, exciting ways of cooking our superb raw ingredients. Ms O'Sullivan also believes that we need to come up with approved recipes and gold standard for dishes which tourists want, like bacon and cabbage and Irish stew.
Should it be Noel Kenny's Bacon and Cabbage with Rashers and Caraway Seeds? Or Neil McFadden's Cavan Ham with Spicey Savoy Cabbage?
Or does "Irish cuisine" actually exist at all? "Irish cooking is not bacon and cabbage and Irish stew. That's post Famine stuff and food for the middle of winter," says Noel Kenny of Crookedwood House in Mullingar.
He believes that Irish cooking needs to develop its own identity, but that "we should be thinking that we'll try to define Irish cooking with Europe in mind. It's really European cooking. The only thing we can do is put a name on Irish food as being Irish."
Most of the other five chefs in the competition seem to agree that Irish cooking looks to Europe - and beyond - rather than its own past. While some excellent Irish cooking is currently being done in former "big houses", it's not inspired by the traditional cooking of the Ascendancy, which was English and centred around large joints of meat.
Modern Irish cooking is actually fusion food - likely to contain Pacific, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Italian and French influences in a form of "world" cooking that's not unlike "world music".
If these six chefs have anything else in common, it's their sheer daring. Some are self taught rustics; others are virtuosos trained in the toughest, most regimented French kitchens yet none is a conformist. Each one has an individual approach, proving that like the music of the Cranberries or the fusion of Riverdance, Irish food is about taking risks with tradition and enjoying it.
"I DON'T think wet really have a clearly identifiable cuisine," says Gerry Galvin, who became one of the founding fathers of the new Irishcooking movement when he opened The Vintage in Kinsale in 1976. "Our food is eclectic and not noticeably Irish and can have Moroccan and Pacific rim influences. There is, however, a growing realisation that our raw materials are superior to a lot of others: that our fish comes from the least polluted waters and our meat from the least polluted land. It's the quality of the ingredients that makes us stand apart and very little should be done with those. The ingredients should not be layered, with too much of other flavours.
Like many of the other chefs in the cook off, he has been influenced by Myrtle Allen and her daughter in law Darina, whose emphasis on honest, natural ingredients the integrity of which is preserved in the cooking has become the essential philosophy of the top Irish chefs in the competition.
The BSE scare could not be happening at a worse time for Horizons, but An Bord Bia will be attempting to convince the foreign visitors that Irish beef is untainted and safe.
