West Cork to get a taste of Dublin
Two Michelin-starred restaurants will migrate from Dublin to West Cork for one day next month. Mews restaurant in Baltimore will host the Heron & Grey team for a tasting menu dinner at 7.30pm on Tuesday, September 11th (€95) and Ross Lewis and Eric Matthews of Chapter One will serve a four-course set menu at two sittings, 6pm and 9pm, on Sunday, September 16th (€55).
The pop-ups are part of the Taste of West Cork food festival (September 7th-16th), which will see more than 250 events taking place in 41 towns and villages and on eight islands. Tickets for both dinners will go on sale on September 1st, online at mewsrestaurant.ie.
The Heron & Grey dinner will be created using only West Cork ingredients, and the team from the Blackrock, Co Dublin, restaurant will spend the day before the event foraging and visiting local suppliers. The Chapter One dinner will be composed of signature dishes from the Dublin 1 restaurant.
Robert Collender, who runs Mews with James Elllis, says the team have had their best season to date. "The ingredients are absolutely extraordinary this year and the sun helps with visitor numbers too. We will be open for our longest season yet – until the end of October.
"Head chef Ahmet Dede and sous-chef Remi Lachiaille are running the kitchen again this year, supported by three young, very talented Irish chefs, Jack Lenards (formerly Glovers Alley, The Greenhouse), Rudi Henwood (previously Glebe Gardens and Pilgrims) and Darragh Carroll (previously Huset, Maaemo). Our sommelier is Marina Jacques, formerly assistant sommelier at Chapter One."
Dine for suicide prevention
Tickets go on sale on Monday for the next Food for Thought six-course dinner hosted by volunteer chefs in aid of the suicide-prevention charity, 3ts (Turn the Tide of Suicide). It will take place on Monday, September 24th at Mulberry Garden in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, and tickets (€85, including wine) will be available online on EventBrite.
A star-studded line-up of chefs – Ciaran Sweeney (Forest & Marcy), Aoife Noonan (Glovers Alley), Killian Crowley (Aniar), Damien Grey (Heron & Grey), Patrick Ryan (Firehouse Bakery), and Daniel Hannigan (Richmond), will cook at the pop-up. It is the latest in a series of chef-driven fundraisers organised by Hannigan, who lost his father to suicide at the age of five.
Food for Thought is also running a barbecue at Opium on Wexford Street in Dublin 2 on August 12th (3pm-8pm). Monkfish tacos, pig on a spit, turbot baked in banana leaf and pork buns are on the menu. Tickets, which include a cocktail, are available on EventBrite (€25).
Kildare food festival a winner
The walled garden at The K Club in Straffan will be the venue for the first Taste of Kildare food festival on Sunday, August 19th. To promote the festival, which will feature cookery demonstrations by Ross Lewis and Martin Shanahan, among others, Co Kildare Tourism is running a competition to "dine out for a year in 12 of Kildare's best restaurants".
The participating restaurants, which are each offering dinner for two, are Baileys Bistro at the Clanard Court, Athy; The Ballymore Inn, Ballymore Eustace; The Brown Bear, Two Mile House; Burtown House, Athy; Canteen Celbridge, The Dew Drop Inn, Kill; Fallons of Kilcullen; Harte’s of Kildare town; Las Radas Tapas, Naas; Lemongrass Fusion, Naas; Chapter 16 at Silken Thomas, Kildare town; Two Cooks, Sallins. No purchase is necessary and you can enter at intokildare.ie.
Dockland delights at Charlotte Quay
The second event in Dublin Docklands restaurant Charlotte Quay’s summer series takes place tomorrow. The bank holiday Sunday event kicks off with cocktails on the terrace at 4pm and supper, a surf ’n’ turf selection served family-style, at 6pm.
Appetisers, served on the terrace, will include salt cod and black pudding cakes, lobster and pea croquettes, prawn and baby gem wraps, and crab and sweetcorn chowder.
Moving indoors, starters will be trout rillettes with pickled gooseberries, Irish beef battuta (an Italian tartare) with avruga caviar, and scallop and lardo skewer. Main courses of pork belly with octopus and chorizo, duck-fat-roasted salmon, and rosé veal osso buco with gambas, will be followed by peach cheesecake for dessert. Tickets (€50) are online atcharlottequay.ie.
