To some Irish food producers, Richard Corrigan is about as popular as a fox in a henhouse.
His views on supermarket chicken earned hate mail from poultry farmers after an appearance on RTÉ's Tubridy Tonight show last year. But Corrigan's god-like status among chefs is undimmed and made him a natural choice to promote an event described as Ireland's "first outdoor gastronomic festival".
Taste of Dublin 2006 aims to do for foodies what the Oxegen festival does for music fans. For four days in June, 15 of the city's top restaurants will showcase their talents in the gardens of Dublin Castle. Visitors will pay an admission charge, and once inside they can graze freely on signature dishes from such headline acts as Chapter One, L'Écrivain, and Roly's Bistro.There'll be music and theatre too, but only in a support role.
Announcing the event yesterday in Dublin Castle, Corrigan was in typically forthright form. "It's only in the last five or six years that Irish people have discovered - for the first time ever - what good food is," he said.
When he left Meath in 1983, Ireland was poor and food was something you still didn't take for granted. The country had since become wealthy and secure about the future: "People have got over that handicap of thinking that it's all going to end in two years."
On the other hand, he describes as "one of the great lazy lies of life" the idea that you need to be rich to eat well: "There's good, locally produced, fresh food everywhere, but people have to get off their arses to find it."
He still gets passionate about chicken, something he concedes should not be nearly as cheap as it is. A properly-raised, free-range organic bird should cost three or four times as much as the junk food on legs sold in most supermarkets: "But before people complain about the price, they should consider the hidden costs of chicken that's full of antibiotics, in terms of the higher resistance to medicines it causes, for example."
Although he has made his name in London, first at Lindsay House and now with Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill, he becomes defensive on behalf of Dublin restaurants on the issue of value for money. "It's horrendously expensive to operate in Dublin, and the returns are not colossal. If you asked a lot of businessmen to invest in something with an 8 per cent margin, they'd tell you go and jump. I don't see many restaurant owners here driving around in Porsches."
Taste of Dublin begins on June 22nd and will be based closely on Taste of London, begun three years ago and now held in Regents Park.
Corrigan will be among a number of stellar chefs giving demonstrations at the Irish event, with others including Anthony Worrall Thompson, Patrick Guilbaud, and Derry Clarke. Restaurants taking part also include the King Sitric, La Stampa, the Silk Road Cafe, and the Unicorn. Tickets prices range from €25 to €75. More details are available from www.tasteofdublin06.ie
