26 May 2008
Burren Slow Food
Well, you can't quite see us behind the great windows of the Cliffs of Moher visitor centre, but we were there on Saturday night at An Evening on the Edge of the World, the highlight of the first Burren Slow Food festival.
Wonderful cooking from the Longdock team, best known for their Carrigaholt operation but showing cracking form on Saturday with a menu of superb local foods, including Burren Smokehouse fish, Burren Spring lamb, Bunratty mead, a trio of local cheeses and the sublime Linnalla ice creams and sorbets. Sponsors Febvre had terrific wines, chosen by Monica Murphy, including a magnificent bio-dynamic Barbera from Monferrato.
The Saturday line up included Dianne Curtin, Clodagh McKenna who had flown in from Italy and who is on top form, Siobhan ni Gharbaith of St Tola who was entrancing in her talk about her cheese, Aidan McGrath of the Doonbeg resort, and John McKenna of the Bridgestone parish rabitted on about his theory of the Knowledge Society, which is liable to crop up on this blog sometime soon.
Organiser Brigitta Curtin and her team did a superb job, and this was a joyous weekend, made all the better for the McKenna tribe who stayed at Sheedy's Hotel and loved it, especially the breakfasts which are amongst the very best, and where there is no buffet: first time the McKenna kids had ever seen such a thing!
Slow Food: you know it makes sense, especially when you see it in practice as it was in the Burren. And on now to autumn's Terre Madre in Waterford...