Sizzling food festival serves up optimism

THE RECESSION may well be over if the annual Taste of Dublin is a portent of things to come.

A record 32,000 people turned up at the Iveagh Gardens – an increase of 10,000 on last year – despite the perennial griping about ticket prices for the event.

After three days of near-perfect weather, the event’s luck ran out when a biblical deluge of rain fell yesterday afternoon.

Avril Bannerton, from event planners, Brand Events Ireland, said the crowds were indicative that confidence was coming back into the economy and people were fed up talking about the recession.

“Most people know that bad things have happened. Irish people are resilient. They will always party,” she said.

She defended the ticket price of €28.50 which did not include food nor the €20 which the Ballymaloe cookery school was charging for a demonstration.

“You get what you pay for. We have kept the price the same for the last five years and we have a €15 promotion on Thursday and Friday. We had a huge line-up of visiting chefs and a great variety of food,” she explained.

It was standing-room only in the demonstration tent yesterday where celebrity chef Clodagh McKenna showed how to make tomato and basil soup and Tuscan chicken.

The well-travelled McKenna said Irish people are among the most positive she has ever met (“have you ever heard how the French or the Italians complain?”) and she is aiming to prove it with her ambitious cookery school, cafe and market which opened its doors last Friday at The Village at Lyons in Celbridge, Co Kildare.

“Suppliers and producers have been very supportive. There is a lot of goodwill out there when you start a business in the recession,” she said.

Chef Judy Kavanagh, who hit on the idea a few years ago of doing cookery demonstrations in people’s homes, said she had to let three people go last year, but has been “flat out” since January.

She said there was a general feeling that the worst was over.

“People feel that if they were going to lose their jobs, they would have done so by now. That said there are a lot of people with big houses and big kitchens without the money to go out who want to learn to cook at home.”

An indoor Taste of Christmas will be held in the Convention Centre Dublin in late November for the first time.