Found this on an (Irish) blog today – “Big brands are capturing increasingly large shares of the market, making individual, idiosyncratic wines harder to find”. Sorry, but that’s utter bollocks. Big brands may be increasing market share but it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find idiosyncratic.There’s never been a wider choice of wines here ...
My old man and I had little in common but we did follow the same football team and we shared a love of those bits of the beast that others, especially these days, throw away. “Giblets, ribs, trotters, hearts, bring ‘em on” was our rallying cry. My mother always cooked bacon ribs with butter beans, ...
My good friend Maureen O’Hara who runs Premier Wine Training sends me news that Alberto Zenato will present a tasting of Zenato wines in Dublin, on Sunday evening, April 15th. Until I get the event calendar up and running again, here are the details. Places cost €20 per person. Space is limited, and places must ...
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American business psychologist Warren G. Bennis, described by Forbes magazine as ‘the king of leadership gurus’ is on record for saying “People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.” An adage that should be learned and committed to heart by restaurateurs, too ...
I’ve been a photo hobbyist since I got given my first serious camera as a fourteenth birthday present. A Zeiss Ikon ‘folder’ that took a mere eight shots to a roll of film, far cry from today’s digital wonders. It had an f4.5 lens, very slow by today’s standards. Being something of a tech head ...
There are now over 400 food bloggers in Ireland. Though www.forkncork.com my food and drink website, Ireland’s first, has been up and running almost ten years I never considered myself a part of the blogosphere. Though the term ‘blog’ had been coined in the early noughties it certainly wasn’t in common usage, at least not ...
Natural Wine Tasting at Fallon & Byrne, Dublin by Le Caveau My first encounter with what has come to be called ‘natural wine’ came some five or six years ago during the Salon de Vins de Loire at Angers. That week I was staying at the Chateau des Vaults, as a guest of Evelyne de ...
I cooked my first sweet and sour dish in 1984. Pork, of course. The recipe came from Ken Hom’s Encyclopaedia of Chinese Cookery Techniques, a cookery book classic and one I bought the minute it came out that year, on foot of Ken’s successful BBC TV series. I still refer to this book on a ...
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“We really cook very simply. Remember that the methods and ingredients have been used for generations and in the past there were hardly any cooking facilities and definitely no microwave ovens, so things had to be easy. The key to the whole thing is that in the ‘old days’ food had much better flavour and ...
I’ve just been road testing a brace of quality coffees from a small and relatively new Irish supplier, Imbibe. Latin Espresso is a blend from Columbia and Costa Rica beans. The blend was described to me by Imbibe’s man Gary Grant as “a medium-to-dark roast espresso which is rich, sweet and balanced with notes ...
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