UNITED NATIONS of chefs:Necessity may be the mother of invention, but there's nothing like a recession to prompt restaurateurs to get creative, and cost-conscious.
From a plethora of good value offers available all over the country, the three-course dinner menu for €20 offered by Brid Torrades at Tobergal Lane Cafe, one of her two restaurants in Sligo town, stands out for its inventiveness. Harnessing the skills of her brigade of multinational chefs, Torrades is offering parties of six or more a choice of traditional French, Italian, Polish or Czech menus at this bargain price. Tables must be booked in advance, and the nationality of menu decided upon. As well as offering good value to customers, it’s a novel way of stirring up a bit of competition in the kitchen. My bet is on the Italian! Book on 071-9146599.
BOOK IT NOW
It’s not all doom and gloom in the hospitality industry, with 16 new restaurants and 12 new places to stay featuring in the just published 2009 editions of the Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants and 100 Best Places to Stay. It’s 20 years since guidebook authors and publishers John and Sally McKenna splashed out £100 on a Renault 4 and set off on their initial journey to find the best hospitality that Ireland had to offer. “And we still have a hugely dynamic and progressive food economy,” John McKenna says. “Good places will thrive during the recession, while the pubs will continue to die – they have no concept of service.”
The south-east leads the way with two significant new openings in the past year that McKenna hails as benchmarks – The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford, where chef Martin Kajuiters’ superb food is matched by the drama of the cliffside location, and Campagne (above), chef Garrett Byrne’s critically acclaimed new restaurant in Kilkenny city. “The Cliff House, which is extremely busy, shows how if you get the signature right, they will turn up.” McKenna also praises “the professionalism at Campagne, right from the first day”.
And his top chefs of 2009? “Within the trade, I think there is general consensus that Dylan McGrath of Mint [Ranelagh, Dublin 6] is out on his own. Up North, Brian McCann of Shu [Lisburn Road, Belfast] is the hot ticket.”
McKenna is scathing of developments he describes as “a big new hotel with a golf course in the middle of nowhere”. The future looks bleak, McKenna says, for the plethora of newly built hotels that have sprung up around the country, and which he believes will now close down on a weekly basis. “Steady, incremental, organic improvement is how one builds a deep-rooted food and hospitality culture, and of course it is the very opposite of the drop-’em-from-the-sky hotels that are energy and environmental black spots that should never have been built in the first place, ” he says.
The Bridgestone guides are smartly produced, slim and ultra-portable reference sources that also manage to be a lively and engaging read. And with the input of a nationwide team of contributors, there’s hardly a corner of the country left untouched in the search for culinary excellence and hospitality hotspots.
On sale now in bookshops, or from www.bridgestoneguides.com (€10). mcdigby@irishtimes.com
EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY
Former public affairs consultant Caroline McGrath, who owes her surname to her half-Irish husband, was keen to come up with a new career she could run from her Oxfordshire home, and fit in with her husband's air force career at the same time. The website – carolinemcgrath.co.uk – an online shop full of unusual and stylish Scandinavian designs for the home, is the result. We really like this Oma ceramic lemon squeezer (£28/€29.90), from Finnish design company, Tonfisk, which performs well and looks good enough to bring to the table. McGrath, whose website went live last July, has sent many orders to Ireland, North and south, and the postage prices are reasonable – just £5.38 (€5.74) to deliver the squeezer to an address in the south. www.carolinemcgrath.co.uk
SAY IT WITH CAKE
Tomorrow sees the launch of a new range of American-style cupcakes at KC Peaches restaurant, cafe and gourmet market in Pearse Street, Dublin 2. The flavours will change each month, but the launch selection is chocolate/vanilla; coconut, cappuccino, lemonade, and the southern States favourite, red velevet, which has been renamed red devil for the Irish market.
"Originally, its deep red colour was thought to be due to a reaction between early varieties of cocoa and baking soda," explains KC Peaches owner Katie Cantwell, a former Seattle resident who quit corporate life for a new career in catering.
Nowadays red food colour is often used to replicate the cake's distinctive hue, but as KC Peaches doesn't use additives, preservatives or colours, the bakers there are using strawberry juice instead. The cupcakes cost €2.50 each and are sold individually or in boxes of six or 12, and there's one free with every dozen.