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 many of whom seem content to stick rigidly to the same timeworn formula until the closure sign goes up on the door.

It’s generally recognized that five years is about as long as a restaurant can survive before major changes have to be made and that the trick is to make such changes before doing so becomes a last resort. The other trick is to make sure you are not making changes for the wrong reasons; there’s a world of difference between the restaurant going stale and the proprietor going stale.

Alexis, popular restaurant in Dun Laoghaire, has been in business about four and a half years. Recently Patrick O’Reilly and his brother chef Alan decided time for change had come and the opportunity presented itself, in particular, to remedy the two most persistent criticisms made by diners one, that the dining room is noisy and two, the service sometimes got a tad ragged around the edges. Here’s Patrick announcing (on my website forum) the proposed changes:- “ Over the next 4 weeks we will be renovating the restaurant, reducing the numbers and taking the food, service and wine list up a level. We will be making the room a bit softer and more intimate and have been advised by an acoustics expert to help us along. In addition, we have recruited a new head chef and have replaced some other staff with more experienced personnel. We will be doing intensive training with all of those remaining to upskill them to the level we want. We’re seriously excited about the direction the food is going to take and I’m personally buzzing about the new wine list I’m in the process of putting together. The key element in the new project will be that, despite the proposed improvements in every area of the business, we plan to keep our pricing at or about the same level and retain the accessibility and relaxed nature of the service.” Bloody hell, I thought at the time. That’s some mission statement. If Pat and Alan could pull it off, we should give them charge of Ireland’s regeneration.

Accordingly Ruby, Pearl and myself, dining companions with a long mutual history, navigated the challenging Dun Laoghaire one-way system intent on checking whether the Alexis revamp had ticked all the boxes. First off, the dining room, while you couldn’t call it intimate, is certainly cosier. The new soft furnishings and the acoustic baffling have given the space an altogether calmer, quieter demeanour. We leaned back into comfortable chairs. The piped music,  initially intrusive, got less so as the room filled up, dampened by the buzz of conversation.

Our service requirements were amply met by a skilled and personable South African lad and by Pat himself. The timing between courses was immaculate – only a small matter but getting it right makes such a difference to the enjoyment of a multi-course meal. The new wine list justified Pat’s “buzz”. Picpoul seems to be making an impression at the minute and I’m glad. Too me it seems like the white wine all you Pinot Grigio drinkers have been marking time for, a wine for our times, a felicitous half-way house between stingy Sauvignon Blanc and fat cat Chardonnay.

But the glory of Alexis is the food. Always has been. Impeccably sourced ingredients, ‘real’ and seasonal treated in the kitchen with love, affection and respect. Venison, rare breed pork, sweetbreads, pigeon and other rustic delights featured regularly, flying in the face of conventional restaurant wisdom which says that for every portion you sell you could do a dozen chicken breasts and make more money. Could this food for foodies get any better?

It soon became evident that it could. Starters, even the goat cheese one, avoided the habitual clichés. The dressing that came with my sweetbreads and wild mushrooms had the pluperfect amount of ‘zing’. The flavour burst from my wood pigeon was incredible, putting me in mind of those sherbet things I used to enjoy as a kid. Ruby’s hake positively glistened and the sight of Pearl’s slow-cooked beef had me making preposterous promises in return for a mouthful – “Hang my shirts up? ‘Course I will, dear.” Presentation has been considerably sharpened up. Whereas Alexis’s food previously had substance it now has real style too. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the desserts. You could have hung ours as a triptych on the wall at The Tate Modern and charged a tenner to view. As to value for money, there is currently no better to be had within the confines of The Pale than Alexis Bar & Grill’s €24 three-courser.

Alexis Bar and Grill, 17 / 18 Patrick Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Tel: 01 280 8872

Food ****1/2

Wine ****

Service ****

Ambience ***1/2

Overall ****

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  I’ve subsequently probably owned as many cameras as Tiger Woods has golf clubs. Ranging from a tiny Minox ‘spy camera’ to a massive Bronica EC that weighed 2.5 kg and sounded like a gun going off every time the shutter was pressed. I’ve photographed friends’ weddings with a pair of hefty twin lens reflexes slung around my neck as backup to the one on the tripod – an extreme take on the ‘belt-and-braces’ theme.  Won a prize from The Scottish Tourist Board for a pic  of a ‘best bull’ competition at Moffat Show. Directed food shoots for Food & Wine, Intermezzo and other publications. I bought my first digital camera back in 1999. Somehow, I’ve managed to amass 13,242 (and counting) photos on my computer’s hard disk. So while I’m not a pro, I’m not a dummy either.

The recent food photography seminar, organised by The Irish Food Bloggers Association in conjunction with Bord Bia (or was it the other way round) was a brilliant event.  I gleaned a heap of nitty-gritty from both Sharon Hearne-Smith and Jocasta Clarke and, equally important, remembered a lot of things I’d forgotten. At the same time I came away feeling that, had I been a virgin snapper, I might have picked up a few misconceptions. Like I should immediately go out and buy an SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera, preferably a Canon, shoot in RAW and process my pictures in Photoshop.

This article is not about ‘How to take better food photographs’. It’s about not spending more than you need to. The three cameras in the picture above are my own, all of them in current use for ‘something or other’.

The diddy one on the left is a Nikon Coolpix S8000. It cost €175. It has a tiny sensor, offering 14 megapixels. It has a 10 x zoom lens, far longer than I’d need for any kind of food photography. It takes impressive photographs provided you don’t need images bigger than 10 x 8 inches. This is certainly far bigger than the 550 pixel wide shots I need for my blog. Big bonus is, it’s inconspicuous, great for taking shots in restaurants.

The one in the middle is brand spanking new, a model released only a couple of weeks ago. It’s a Fujifilm X10 and it cost me €500. It has a larger sensor than the 8000 and a quality, all glass f2 lens, a moderate 4 x zoom.   The f2 lens will allow me to use it hand held in fairly low light without camera shake and without having to up the ISO rating (high ISO speeds degrade the image). Used at the maximum aperture it will allow me to fade out the background.  Used with care I should be able to get decent image quality up to A3. I’m confident that this will become the camera I’ll use 90% of the time indoors and out, unless I need (a) the versatility and (b) the impressive quality of the big rascal on the right.

This monster  is a Nikon D2Xs, which I bought second hand shortly after the new super-sexy D3 came out. The D2Xs was top of the line of  of  Nikon’s professional cameras until they introduced the D3 which has what’s come to be regarded (erroneously, as it happens) as a ‘full size’ sensor. For the record a D3X will set you back around €6500, body only. The lens on my D2Xs is an f1.4 85mm – which translates to 105mm as the D2 series have a slightly smaller than ‘full size’ sensor.  It’s a beautiful lens, pin sharp with a capacity  for dissolving the unwanted background into beautiful patterns of faded light that can look really artistic. The 85mm focal length and the very wide aperture of f1.4 make it possible to focus selectively on parts of the subject. Drawbacks? Yes, the lens is bloody expensive and its closest focusing distance is not much under 3 feet.

Any one of these cameras will, with a bit of thought, skill and care, produce nice photos of food on plates, like any car will get you from A to B. Some, though, do certain things better or easier. Think Fiat 500 for nipping into town, big SUV for the school run and – but only if you can afford it – Ferrari for fun and pose.

Some good advice

If you haven’t yet got started on the digi trail but are dying to produce blogworthy shots of your lovely food I’d suggest you set aside a budget of around €450 and buy IF SIZE + WEIGHT ISN’T A CONSIDERATION  a base model DSLR from a reputable manufacturer. I’d suggest Canon (EOS 1100) or Nikon (D3000) and here’s why. These companies have been around a long time and, over the years have manufactured a wide range of lenses, using the same mount as their present day digital cameras. Spend €400 on the camera and buy a used 50mm f1.8 lens, of which there are plenty around. It will set you back, I’d say €50-60. This will be a much better lens in quality terms than  than the cheap plastic-lensed zoom that comes bundled with the camera. Especially for food photography. The sensors used in these cameras (known as DX-sized) are smaller than the size of a 24 x 36mm frame for which the lens was designed but much larger than those used in a compact, hence higher resolution. This will give you a moderate telephoto aspect – about the equivalent of using a 75-80 mm lens on a 35mm film camera. This longer effective focal length, combined with the wide (f 1.8 ) aperture will give you the option of having the main subject in sharp focus while, at the same time, blurring the background detail – take a look at any cookery book and you’ll see what I mean. The 50mm lens, used on a Camera with a DX sensor also makes a great portrait lens. Keep the zoom for your holiday snaps.   One of the most difficult tasks facing the photographer about to buy his or her first digital camera is to address the issue of image quality. No other hi-tech field has as poor a track record when it comes to defining the virtues of the products they sell as the digital camera industry.

Megapixels – and why they aren’t the Holy Grail

A manufacturer normally issues one statistic as an indication of quality, the number of megapixels the sensor captures — about as meaningful as the maximum possible speed indicated on your car’s speedometer. Or like saying only people whose partners have king-size willies can have great sex.

Image quality is down to a combination of factors. In rough order of importance these are:

The optics

Here’s a really good easy-to-understand piece on camera lenses http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-lenses.htm

The sensor

This will tell you why pixels aren’t everything http://gizmodo.com/5155942/giz-explains-why-more-megapixels-isnt-always-more-better

The processor – which includes the ‘firmware’ that manages the conversion from beams of light to binary numbers. But remember – your average food blogger is not looking for shots suitable for printing A4 and larger in a magazine or for a cookbook. He/she merely wants pictures that will enhance their blog. Sure a ‘fast’ (which means low ‘f’ number) lens is desirable so you can do that ‘selective focus’ thing. There are a few mid-priced non-SLR ‘enthusiast’s compact’ cameras around that will achieve this – like the Olympus XZ which has an f1.8 lens, the Samsung  EX1 and my own X10 all of which cost between €399 and €550. The flashguns on these cameras are pretty Mickey Mouse but on-camera flash doesn’t work well for food photography unless you bounce the flash or shoot into one of the special shades or brollies available. Most professionals these days prefer to use natural light anyway. Some of you may already own digital SLR’s and if you do, fine. If so, don’t be suckered into trading up.

What  the Professionals use and Why it’s Irrelevant

Jocasta Clarke at the seminar said “Most pros use Canons”. This is not exactly true. Professional usage, worldwide, is split roughly 50/50 between Canon and Nikon. The reason why most pros in Ireland use Canons is because the Canon advertising and marketing operation here has always been more switched on than its Nikon equivalent. Furthermore, professionals use Nikon and Canon because the build quality (of the pro series at least) is a given. But also because these two makes have a wider range of lenses and accessories than the rest. There is absolutely no reason why your Sony, Olympus, Pentax etc should, in capable hands, not take just as good photographs as the guy with the Canon.

One thing you should have is a tripod. Go for a good sturdy one unless you are intent on using it on location wyhen you’ll need one you can carry. If you travel a lot on foot, it’s worth noting that the handy Manfrotto monopod can allow you to take sharp photos in low-ish light and double as  a walking pole.

The  RAW  Deal

Simply put, most digital cameras are capable of saving in two modes, some in three. One is as an image – a ‘jpeg’ as it’s called. Some but not all of its characteristics can be modified using special software – atb the risk of degrading the image. The second is as a RAW file. RAW is saved as a string of characters. When the image is modified certain of these characters are replaced with others and therefore the image does not degrade. Many camera manufacturers have their own version of RAW so it’s worth checking if the RAW conversion program you decide to use supports your camera. Most do, except for very recent models which can take some time to find their way into the latest version of the program. The third image designation is a ‘tif’ – an image of the highest quality usually produced by creating a RAW file, manipulating in software and saving in the .tif format. This will be a huge image and will eat memory in camera or computer. Your average blogger need not concern themselves with tifs. Most cameras can record RAW files  and jpegs (in a choice of  qualities) simultaneously. I’d suggest you shoot in RAW + the largest jpeg you can fit into your blog. That way, if you get lucky and end up with an image that doesn’t require any software jiggery-pokery you can slap it down on the page and get on with real life!  

To process raw you will need a RAW developer/converter.

This is a software program that does three things: 1. It allows you to tweak the image by increasing/decreasing exposure; changing the white balance and messing around with a whole load of other factors that will, hopefully, ensure you end up with the food shot of your dreams. 2. It enables you to convert the files from RAW to jpeg or tif images. 3. It also allows you to change the image file’s size so it can be incorporated into your blog without using masses of bandwidth.

But…

The learning curve for some of these programs is pretty steep if you are to exploit their capabilities to the full.

Nikon and Canon have their own programs, which do not necessarily work with other manufacturers’ RAW files – a point to bear in mind if, like me, you are a multi-camera user.

Many  professionals use the Adobe ( a software manufacturer) programs – Lightroom and Photoshop, which can be chain-linked. They don’t come cheap and there is a steeper learning curve than Nikon Capture NX2 or its Canon equivalent. Capture NX2 is excellent and fairly intuitive but it won’t handle Fuji or Canon RAW formats.

There are many cheaper programs that will do the job.  I’ve also used a program called Silkypix for years, with a variety of cameras and got excellent results. THe version designated ‘Pro’ is particularly good. Many people reckon Silkypix is  not user-friendly but I find it logical enough and nice to use, with lovely skin tones if you do any portrait work. A single user license will set you back about €90. A program called ACDSee gets very good results and costs only $79, a fraction of the Adobe product. 

Most of these are available for download on a 30-day trial basis.I’d suggest you download a few and see which you like before investing cash. There are a few free programs too. Anyhow, that’s about it. There are better people than me around who can show you how to take decent shots. But I hope this will be helpful to some.

Finally, as encouragement to all those who don’t have the latest megabucks pixel muncher… SOMETIMES, YOU JUST GET LUCKY!

Ciutadella harbour, Menorca. Early evening, late July. A convenient wall did duty as a tripod substitute. The light was right, beautiful luminosity. Framing was exact – there was no need to crop. No critical details lurked in the corners where lens definition can fall off. I took this shot, a jpeg, on a Fujifilm camera boasting a mere 3.3 megapixels.  Naomi our designer, used it, unprocessed, as a double page spread in F&W Magazine. As I said, you can get lucky.

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 here in Ireland. No, www.forkncork.com was ‘a website’, I reckoned. So I typed, scanned and uploaded blithely ignorant of the inhabitants of Planet Blog, multiplying like mushrooms around me. Until a couple of months ago, when a friend said “How’s your blog going?” and I thought “Blimey! Is that what it is? Hey, I’m a blogger!” Hardly a Damascene conversion but I did feel a smidge like Hans Anderson’s duck, the one who suddenly twigged he was a swan.

‘Blogger’ sounds so much cooler than ‘website proprietor’. Having assumed my new identity the next thing was to find out if I had family out there. Splashing about in the big pond that’s the web I came across The Irish Food Bloggers Association. Here I found kith and kin, people who, like me, enjoyed cooking something nice to eat and writing it up. Though I’m by no means the clubbable kind I joined up.

Bloggers are sociable souls. The IFBA run a fair few functions for their members, one of which was a food photography day organised with the help of Bord Bia. Though I’ve been taking photographs as a hobby since I was old enough to suss that the round glass hole goes at the front, I thought the event might provide opportunity to meet other food bloggers and, hopefully, hone up my photographic skills. The day was kicked off by the energetic and eminently likeable Donal Skehan – no mean food photographer himself, though commendably self-deprecating. Jocasta Clarke, a professional photographer with a number of food books to her credit and Sharon Hearne-Smith, a food stylist, gave a glimpse of how the pros do it and gave tips on improving our technique. Final turn was Damien Mulley a guy who seemingly regards himself as ‘the baron of blog’, advising how we might make ours more visible. Seems all we need is a penchant for picking fights with celebs and a snap of a naked lady wrestling a python – don’t ask!

During the intervals we munched lovely cakes, scones and tarts thoughtfully brought along by some of the attending bloggers, numbering forty in all. I was gobsmacked when Kristin Jensen, co-founder of IFBA told me the Association boasts 400 members and growing. That’s 400-odd people in Ireland alone, writing on the web about food! Contrast that with maybe thirty (and declining) in print media and you get some idea of the way things are going.

It’s not surprising that the food and hospitality industry PR machine has started to cosy up to the food bloggers. Some restaurants now extend dining invitations to the blogging community, hoping for a favourable review. Significant bloggers are included in junkets formerly the exclusive perk of mainstream journalists. Some are given or loaned products to test. Product reviews in blogs should maybe taken with a pinch of salt (of the freshly ground marine variety). Unless you’ve had a lot of practice it’s hard to give a bad rap to a free blender. There is, as yet, no food bloggers’ code of ethics.

Nigel Slater and our own Darina are the patron saints of food blogging. I’ve never been in another blogger’s house but I can imagine framed portraits of the pair hung above the fireplace, in the space a previous generation reserved for the Pope and J.F.K. Bloggers usually write in the first person. Suits me, I’ve always been an opinionated sod, I can do “I” and “me” with the best. Where I do go off message is that food bloggers do not tend to be savagely critical, conserving their small stock of napalm for the occasional blitz on battery chickens or food with millions of air miles. This grumpy, censorious old git will have to practice being nicer to his fellow humans if he’s to coexist.

For those who are tempted but haven’t yet dipped their  toes into the tide  of food blogging they’ll find the blogmood  upbeat, informal, very much heart-on-sleeve. Most blogs major on recipes, with a generous dollop of local, green and good-for-you. Food bloggers, by and large, have marshmallow hearts; they embrace causes like ‘Eat Irish for a Week’ – that is if they can bear to give up coffee for the duration!  For many, the blog is a hobby; bloggers usually have day jobs, kids or both so don’t expect daily updates. Culinary interests are kaleidoscopic – chilli worshippers, curry mavens, Mexican, Scandinavian, Korean, Italian food tifosi. There are a lot of bakers, mostly excellent and a good few soup specialists. Vegetarians and vegans are well catered for. People with dietary restrictions or allergies will find kindred spirits. All foodie life is there.

For my part, I’m delighted with my new found chums. I’ve ploughed a lonely furrow since I left Food & Wine Magazine. Now I’m coming to realise that, as Rogers & Hammerstein (nearly) put it “Blog on, blog on and you’ll never blog alone…”

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 Pontbriand, proprietor of the first-rate Savennieres winery, Domaine du Closel. Also staying at the chateau was a young Belgian journalist. One evening, before dinner, he brought from his room seven or eight wines, an assortment of red and white, saying “I would like you to try these. It is the wine of the future.” After such a flourish of trumpets, how could I refuse. Twirling a glass of cloudy liquid before taking a generous swig, your man pronounced “One day all wine will taste like this”. Nervously, I took a second mouthful which only served to confirm my initial opinion -that the wine was spoiled, acetic and wholly vile. As were most of its cohorts. There was not one wine in the batch that I’d consider ‘of merchantable quality’, as the old legal phrase goes.

Since then things have moved on. Wines of this kind, made from hand-picked grapes,with minimum intervention in the winery, using ‘wild’ i.e. naturally present yeasts rather than bought-in cultivars have proliferated. Their proponents have coined a term – ‘natural wine’ to describe the product. Principally, they believe that wine today is too mucked-about with, too processed for its own good. They prefer to let nature take its course and if nature hasn’t bestowed the right amount of acidity or tannin or sugar in the grape then we have to put up with what we have. Natural wine makers are against the addition of tartaric acid, powdered tannin or grape concentrate, the tools of the hyper-commercial wineries. These guys are looking to make wine with a ‘sense of place’, wine that reflects its terroir – the soil, the aspect, the micro-climate in which the grapes are grown – one hundred per cent. The wine is to be made without using pesticides, fungicides, weedkillers or other synthetic chemicals or fertilisers. The addition of dollops of sulphur dioxide as a preservative is as much anathema as is trucking in grapes from other locations to balance the blend. The land is farmed at least organically, probably biodynamically, although the certification that accompanies these methodologies is often lacking. The credo of minimum intervention, zero manipulation and low or zero use of sulphur dioxide (which asthma sufferers will find a blessing) is carried over into the winery. It’s both a ‘nowt taken out’ and ‘nowt put in’ philosophy.

Other beliefs have attached themselves to the movement. First and foremost is a quest among producers to make wines that are lower in alcohol than the brands they aim to supplant. Reds are often in the 12-12.5% range, a backtrack to the clarets and burgundies of 30 years ago.

Sceptics might find natural wine a soft target. Firstly, there’s the name. To call a wine made with this methodology ‘natural’ stigmatizes wines which are not so made as ‘unnatural’. Which is fundamentally unfair to a host of good winemakers all over the world who believe that to make the best possible wine nature must be given a little help. The lack of a defined standard is, for me, a major handicap. It’s maybe significant that great winemakers like Olivier Humbrecht in Alsace, Chapoutier on The Rhone and Vanya Cullen in Margaret River, WA have been doing the biodynamic/minimum intervention thing for years yet they and others have thus far declined to add their weight and influence to the ‘natural’ movement. Then there’s the variable quality; a recent tasting in Dublin revealed that while there are some decent and enjoyable natural wines there are also real bummers, some cloudy, others acetic, still others exhibiting funky farmyard flavours most critics would consider a winemaking fault (although some do have a surprising (to me) tolerance of, even liking for, brettanomyces. To be fair, there are wines of variable quality at most tastings, natural or no. But proponents of the ‘unnatural’ stuff will at least agree that a wine is oxidized or bretty, they won’t shrug the shoulders and utter a De Niroesque ‘this is how it is because this is how it is”. The arrogance of some natural wine adherents is simply staggering. On more than a few occasions I’ve been presented with a glass of murky liquid having more in common with scrumpy than with conventional wine and told “This is great”. Yeah, right.

Yet the market for ‘natural’ is growing. English wine merchant Les Caves de Pyrene stocks a wide range, approaching 400 wines at the last count. The company is also a major investor in two London ‘natural’ wine bars and were instrumental in setting up the first Natural Wine Fair in London earlier this year. Many British wine writers were first intrigued, then impressed and some have now nailed their colors to the mast.

Me, I’m still sitting on the fence even though the barbed wire of naturalism is prickling my arse. So far and yes, I know I should have been at the London extravaganza, I simply haven’t tasted enough natural wines of the merchantable kind, nor have I come across a single example that’s really wowed me. And my love of certain well-fettled wines by talented and honest winemakers with the appliance of science at their fingertips has not one whit diminished.

Last week’s Dublin tutored tasting was hosted by specialist wine merchants Le Caveau and presented by Les Caves de Pyrene’s Dario Poddana, an eloquent spokesman for the cause.

The wines

N.V Prosecco di Valdobbiadene. DOC Casa Coste Piane. €17.95 Lively stuff with a crisp, clean nose and on the palate a good weight of fruit – crisp green apples and citrus, with hints of walnut. Tasty. 14.5/20

‘La Dilettante’ AC Vouvray Sec 2010, Pierre et Catherine Breton €18.50 Tasty, clean, classy wine with 100% typicity to grape and region. A gem. 16/20

A.C. Montlouis ‘Minerale +’2010, Frantz Saumon €18.95. Impressive pear, heather and thyme nose fades to reveal bright fruit with a mineral tang. For me this wine was let down by its finish – unpleasant dark notes I could only describe as ‘coal mine’. 13/20

Cotes du Rhone AOP Blanc ‘Les Clos des Grillons’ 2010 €18.65 Wildly aromatic honey and herbal nose leads you to believe this wine will be more substantial but it feels thinner than a 14.5% white from Rhone grapes should. Somewhat rescued by the spicy climax at the back end. 13.5/20

AC Morgon, Cote du Py, Jean Follard 2009 €27.50 Enjoyable, pristine expression of Gamay with lively cherry flavours with a hint of russet apple. Smart kit. 15/20

Touraine AC Cot (Malbec) ‘In Cot We Trust’, Thierry Puzelat, 2008 €19.60 Enjoyed by a couple of other people, I found this wine acidic, unbalanced, beery on the palate and on the nose just too funky. Sad. 10/20

DO Ribiera Sacra, ‘Pezar do Rei’ Cachin/Dieguez 2009 €18.25 ‘Pezar do Rei’ means ‘The Royal Plot’ and this was regal wine. Smart red with lovely weight of cherry and cranberry fruit and a refreshing minerality, the sort of wine I could drink all night and then some. 15.5/20

Gran Cerdo Tempranillo Vino de Mesa 2009. €12.50 With a spot-on fruit acid balance, this easygoing and enjoyable red was bang on the money for the modest ask. Decent wine. 13.5/20

Rosso di Montalcino DOC Az.Ag, Pian dell’Orino di Caroline Pobitzer 2008 €29.95 This, apparently, has something of a reputation which, for me at least it didn’t live up to. Weird, curiously reductive nose fades and rises up as pure ‘farmyard’. Atypical, it didn’t even hint at ‘origin’. And didn’t drink like a €30 wine. 11/20

Sicilia IGT, ‘Vino di Anna’, Anna Martens, 2009. €19.95. It’s been said that the Nerello Mascalese grape can taste like aged Pinot Noir and though I haven’t had much experience with NM, the guy who said it wasn’t wrong! Balanced, rustic without being in any way rough, with endearing strawberry, raspberry and morello cherry flavours, I really liked it. So characterful and at the same time well made, it’s what ‘natural wine’ should be all about. 16/20

Mendoza DO Malbec ‘No Sulphites Added’ Familia Cecchin 2008. €17.55 The other side of the coin. I can’t help but think the addition of even a microscopic amount of sulphur would help stabilise this wine. It’s an extreme style – funky, earthy and, for me, thin, acidic and hard to love. 9/20

Summary: King’s new clothes or the dingo’s danglers? Maybe a bit of both. The “this is how all wine will taste in the future” gang are wrong, I hope. Otherwise I’ll be glugging craft beer with my coq au vin. Unlikely too. Give a panel of punters the choice of the above Montalcino or, say, a bottle of decent conventional Chianti Classico that cost the same money I’ve no doubt as to which wine would win the vote. On the other hand there’s no denying that the better-made natural wines do offer a lively, absorbing and very different drinking experience. And if the claimed alternative really is a world full of plastic tasting ‘industrial’ wines evincing no subtlety nor sense of their origins then the presence of the ‘natural wine movement’ will be essential to redress the balance.

I look forward to gaining more familiarity.

Postscript: If the topic interests you I’d recommend two books: Authentic Wine: Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking by British scientist/wine writer Jaime Goode and New Zealand-born consulting winemaker and Master of Wine Sam Harrop; Naked Wine – Letting Grapes Do What Comes Naturally by  US wine writer Alice Feiring.  The first is a serious treatise, but by no means dull; the second, more a travelogue with thoughts, observations and discussions with wine makers who espouse the ‘natural’ cause of which Feiring is an adherent..

These natural wines and others available from Le Caveau, Market Yard Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny 056 775 2166 or via the website http://www.lecaveau.ie

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 regular basis.

Ken’s recipe for the sweet-and-sour sauce goes:

15ml Shaosing wine or dry sherry

15ml light soy sauce

15ml finely chopped garlic

15ml finely chopped fresh ginger root

30ml tomato purée

100ml Chinkiany vinegar – or 60ml cder vinegar

50g sugar or 3 Chinese sugar slabs

225ml chicken stock

15ml cornflour dissolved in 30ml cold chicken stock

15ml sesame oil

The pork cubes are marinated for at least 30 minutes in 15ml light soy sauce, 15ml Shaosing wine or dry sherry, ½ tsp salt and a beaten egg, then drained and blotted dry, dusted with a 50/50 mix of plain flour and cornflour then deep-fried in ground nut oil in a wok for 3 minutes. The oil is drained from the wok then the sweet-and-sour sauce ingredients (minus the cornflour dissolved in stock) are heated to the boil, together with half a pineapple’s worth of chunks. Then the pork is added, together with the cornflour and a teaspoon of sesame oil.

In the text Ken warns about over-thickening, making the sauce too sweet and having it end up a day-glo red hue.

And there you have it. Sweet-and-sour, yin and yang, is all a question of balance.

Since those days, when I followed the recipe implicitly, I’ve experimented. Hallelujah Day One was when I found if I started with a base of fried finely chopped onion, ginger, garlic, tomato purée and a small pinch of five spice I could dispense with the cornflour and get a cleaner flavour, building up the sauce gradually by adding the stock a little at a time (like I do with a bolognaise sauce) Day Two came when I discovered palm sugar – after I developed an interest in cooking Thai food – gave a more subtle sweetness than granulated white.

Since then I’ve done other tweeks including: adding a little or a lot of finely chopped chilli; cooking half a lemon or lime in the sauce – the sweet element has to be adjusted to take account of this; using honey, maple syrup, even pomegranate molasses to get a different flavour/texture; adding a handful of roughly chopped fresh coriander at the last minute. Infinite variety.

Ken Hom’s Encyclopaedia of Chinese Cookery Techniques is no longer in print but if you can find one second hand, buy it.

“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 simple treatment had wonderful results. But all is not lost. Look out for good ingredients from small, conscientious producers and you’ll find all the flavour is still there. There are a few ingredients that I cook with all the time…my paint box of flavours. Our cooking is remarkably simple. Reading our recipes it looks like everything is flavoured with extra virgin olive oil, garlic and flat leaf parsley. In fact many things are transformed by these simple ingredients, so that their flavour and texture are enhanced.”

The quotation comes not from ‘Dunne & Crescenzi – The Menu’ but from another book I hold very dear, Mary Contini’s (of Valvona & Crolla) ‘Dear Francesca..’. There are many similarities, both are a family affair into which the cookbook buying public are permitted a glimpse; both celebrate the simplicity of Italian cooking; both are written by people on a mission to put the delights of Italian food out there on the high street.

I’ve been a fan of D&C since they first opened their doors in Dublin’s South Frederick Street, happily perching on a barrel top by the bar when they couldn’t offer me a seat in order to devour the bresaola and rocket or good minestrone for lunch. I’ve whiled away many the afternoon in there, putting the world to right with friends over a bottle of Marisa Cuomo’s wine. Nowadays, I’m lucky to have a branch just a five minute walk from home – the multiplicity of outlets, now spread as far as Kildare, is a tribute to Eileen Dunne Crescenzi’s remarkable energy.

A Dunne & Crescenzi outlet is not ‘like Italy’; it IS Italy, as much an outpost of that patchwork quilt of a republic as Sicily or Sardinia. This is apparent in the book. This is no cheffy tome, there is no flirting with fusion, no replacing mozzarella di bufala with roquefort or St.Tola, no larding of pizza with pineapple chunks. Come to think of it, there isn’t a single pizza recipe. The book is simply a celebration of the food served in D&C, recipes and all and that food is an extension of Eileen and Stefano’s home kitchen and those of their relatives, friends and the Italian chefs they employ. It’s so much a family affair that Eileen and Stefano’s daughter, Federica, contributed the excellent photographs.

The recipes are there not for you to admire; they are for you to cook with and, as befits the Italian idiom, there’s nothing in the book that even a beginner would find difficult to replicate. In fact you could pack it with your son or daughter’s belongings when they leave home and be sure they wouldn’t starve. Of course you’d have to issue the stricture that in order to cook proper Italian food you need access to top class ingredients.

I’d like to think I’ll cherish this book – I’ve known Eileen and Stefano for years – but I know I won’t. It will end up on the shelf above the stove, well-thumbed, grease spattered, cover torn, notes scribbled in the margin.

‘Dunne & Crescenzi – the menu’ is also a book for which I’d loved to have written the foreword – damn Graham Knuttel – but then he did live in South Frederick Street so I’ll concede he has a prior claim!

‘Dunne & Crescenzi – the menu’ is published in ireland by Mercier Cookery. €19.99 in hardback.   HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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 of toffee and caramel” All of this was true. However the sample I received was slightly over-roasted for my taste, a phenomenon I’m coming across more and more.

The temptation to dark-roast is entirely understandable; you see, years ago, when we made the giant leap from Nescafe and its ilk to ‘real’ coffee via, firstly, the percolator, then the Cona machine, the filter, the French press or cafetiere, coffee was made in a similar fashion to tea. We poured a cup and added what was, by today’s standards, a small amount of milk, cold or hot. Eventually and it was bound to happen, we discovered the charms of espresso-based coffee. From the off, this was styled on the Italian principle and dammit why not; they invented the machine. The milky version is called cappuccino, meaning ‘little hood’. A cappuccino is a coffee drink topped with micro-foamed milk. Espresso is poured into the bottom third of the cup, and is followed by a similar amount of hot milk. The top third of the drink consists of milk foam, often decorated with artistic drawings made with the same milk and called ‘latte art’.Chocolate,cinnamon, or other spices are often sprinkled onto the top of the finished drink. In a traditional cappuccino the total of espresso and milk/foam make up between approximately 150–180 mL Commercial coffee chains in the US, seeing the potential of putting added value on milk – essentially a cheap ingredient – started to serve the cappuccino as a 360 mL drink, subsequently creating even more grotesque (and more profitable) milk fests.

Italian roasting of coffee beans invariably gets darker as you travel south. In Napoli and Rome drinkers like the ‘big hit’ whereas coffee drinkers in the north prefer a little subtlety. I know from my own experiences with home roasting (I roast 280g of ‘greens’ on rather more than a weekly basis) and from my long wine tasting experience that roasting in coffee introduces similar factors to the influence of oak on wine – the longer wine is left on oak and the higher the degree of ‘toast’ on the barrel, the more the flavour of the finished wine is influenced by the oak aging. So with coffee. The darker the bean is roasted the more it tastes of the roasting process and the less of the character of the beans used. In a perfect world, coffee would be roasted for no longer than it takes to tease out the aromas and flavours inherent in the bean. These are complex – ranging from wine to caramel, woodsmoke to morello cherries with a myriad of complex nuances in between. Alas, life’s not like that. Commercially the need is for a coffee that will cut through the big buckets of milk so dark roasting is ‘way to go’. All that said, the quality of Imbibe’s Latin American Espresso is a given and cafe’s and restaurants would win friends by substituting it for the popular Italian brands, many of which are, in all honesty, truly woeful.

The other coffee was labelled Triple Cert. This coffee is Fairtrade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance Certified, as Gary says “Quite simply, it’s the most ethical coffee you can drink.” It’s a three bean blend comprised of beans from Brazil, Sumatra and Peru. Brazilian coffee forms the base. Soft and mild with a low acidity, it combines well with the more vibrant Peruvian bean. The third bean is from Sumatra and lends backbone and character. I liked this coffee a good deal.

Coffee beans, as I’m sure most know, can be sub-divided into Arabica and Robusta. The conventional wisdom is that Arabica, grown at higher altiudes, brings quality and flavour to a blend whereas Robusta gives strength and the beguiling ‘crema’ that people like to see atop their espresso. The desirability of incorporating some Robusta into the blend is stressed by some producers, largely I suspect because Robusta comes much cheaper. I’ve never found any difficulty getting strength into a pure Arabica blend where needed, nor crema – as long as the coffee is fresh and the brew not over-extracted,

I have myself experimented a good deal with incorporating Sumatran beans into a blend. I find that 5-7.5% of Sumatra in the blend brings a slightly smoky quality, which I love, to the mellow Honduran, El Salvador, Nicaraguan and Brazilian aromas and flavours. The espresso machine is a powerful tool. In the hands of a properly trained barista using good coffee it can deliver exquisite results. However, in many cafes and restaurants, in the hands of under-trained staff or those who have no interest in or love for coffee it produces coffee that’s as subtle as a mad dentist with a chainsaw. The trade is well aware of this – hence the invention of the Nespresso machine.

Why coffee is so neglected in Ireland, in the average cafe and even in restaurants serving stellar food, I just do not know. It is the last thing you consume before leaving. Surely the restaurant has the responsibility to conclude the meal on a high note? But all too often, it fails.

Good Irish coffee suppliers whose beans I’ve tried and tested include:

www.ariosa.com

www.coffeeangel.com

www.imbibe.ie

www.3fe.com

Valpolicella is a viticultural zone of the Italian province of Verona, east of Lake Garda, ranking as the second most significant production region for Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) wines in volume terms (Chianti is first).This red wine is typically made from three grape varietals: Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara although others are permitted  in small quantities to balance the blend.

Valpolicella stalwart and one of wine’s nicest people, Sandro Boscaini, president of Masi dropped onto Dubin the other week and gave us a tasting of Masi Costasera Amarone together with the Amarone from the associated house of Serego Alighieri, which I visited earlier this year. The Serego Alighieri family, too, are charming and hospitable. On our first evening there we enjoyed, in the company of the Contessa, a stroll round Verona viewing locations associated with her illustrious ancestor, the poet Dante, before joining Sandro for dinner at a locally-famed fish restaurant.

Amarone is a unique wine, made in a zone where the temperature is moderated by establishing the vines on elevated sites within reach of the cooling influence of Lake Garda. It is high in alcohol, rich and full bodied but acidic enough to make it unfatiging to drink. Grapes destined for Amarone are the last in Valpolicella to be harvested, being allowed to get as ripe as they can before mould and rot set in. The sugars in the grapes are then concentrated by being kept in purpose built drying rooms for three to four months. During this time over a third of the water is removed as the grapes shrivel into raisins. This method of production is known as passito.

To Sandro Boscaini’s father goes the credit for, in the late 1950s, conceiving the the idea of ripasso a new style of Valpolicella and introducing it to the region. With this technique, the pomace of leftover grape skins and seeds from the fermentation of Amarone – and sometimes the dessert wine Recioto – are introduced to the Valpolicella wines for a period of extended maceration. The additional food source for the yeast helps boost the alcohol level and body of the wines while at, the same time, yielding additional tannins, glycerine and phenolic compounds that enhance a wine’s complexity, flavor and colour. The innovation changed the face of Valpolicella, turning it from a light, easy drinker into ‘serious’ wine. Boscaini senior subsequently accelerated the process by surrendering the name to the local Chamber of Commerce, allowing other producers to use the term for a wine style they had already started making.  A brand was born.

In the region the quality of Amarone varies widely but the wines we tasted ranged from sound to stunning.

Masi Costasera Amarone 2007 Young and developing, replete with rich, dark plummy fruit and, as a wine, an object lesson in achieving the proper fruit/acid balance. 15/20

Serègo Alighieri Vaio Amaron Amarone 2005 Massive, well-structured wine, still evolving with a great weight of ripe dark fruit, plus hints of tobacco and coffee. 18/20

Masi Costasera Amarone 2000 Somehow atypical with morello cherry fruit replacing the plummy notes and hints of almonds and raisins present in the first two wines. Less acidity than the 2005. Starting to dry out a little, not sure how long-lived this vintage will be.14.5/20

Masi Costasera Amarone 1998 Distinctive caramelly nose, pleasing plummy mid-palate then a big peppery alcohol kick at the back end. 15/20

Masi Costasera Amarone 1995 A bit knackered, prunes and green twiggy stuff replacing the fruit. Probably lovely five years ago – supports my contention that I’d rather drink a wine three years too early than a day too late. 13.5/20

Masi Serègo Alighieri Vaio Amaron Amarone 1995 Everything you want in an Amarone – power; acidity perfectly balancing the fruit making for a long, long finish. Cardamom and cinnamon on the nose then voluptuous dark plums, liquorice, cassis, mulberries, savory gamey and loads more. So impressive. 18.5/20

Masi Costasera Amarone 1993 Fading glory but you can still get the point. 14.5/20

Masi Costasera Amarone 1988 The surprise of the tasting. I would have thought this would have been past it but distinct plum and cherry flavours were still coming through underpinning the almonds and herbal notes that come with ageing. Complex and absorbing. 17/20

A reminder of my scoring system: 17-20 Outstanding; if you can afford it buy it. 15-17 wine of some distinction.13-15 Reliable drinking. 11-13 Uncomplicated easy drinking 9-11 You may like it, I didn’t. <9 Avoid

Yesterday I set out to clean out my store cupboard – well, not exactly ‘clean out’ but at least have a good fossick around and see what I have, what I’m nearly out of and what I’m missing.

Like….

3 bottles of dark soy sauce, all opened.

A bottle of Peychaud bitters that must be in the Guinness Book of Records for exceeding its sell-by date.

An empty bottle of Tastefully Yours Sweet Chilli Sauce – awfully hard to throw away those bottles with the lovely old-fashioned mock-stone tops isn’t it? Memo, must buy more of this – along with Lingham’s Original Chilli & Ginger Condiment, the best two examples of this big fat cliché. I’m out of that too.

Nearly out of Fiddes Payne’s Jamaican Jerk spices – one of the best  ’after shaves’ for chicken – can you buy this in Ireland, anyone know?

Umpteen bottles of one-owner, lightly driven bottles of suicide sauces – from Mic’s Chilli Inferno Sauce to two I brought back from Nawlins way before the flood, called Dave’s Assburner and The Mean Green Mutherfucker. Both unused.

Al-Rabih Pure Pomegranate Molasses and Saba, a cotto mosto from Modena, two big faves for use in reductions. A dribble left of each.

A bottle of lovely , natural blueberry pancake or ice cream dressing with a lovely, natural blanket of white mould (or ‘flor’ as they say in Jerez de la Frontera). Must have missed this one.

And so it goes. I’m sure this tawdry scenario will be familiar to many.

Last night we went to review Forty One. Called into Ely for a glass en route and found the very smart Craggy Range ‘Kidnappers Vineyard’ Chardonnay on the Wines OTM card. Well done Steve Smith.

Herself loved decor & ambience of  41. Friendly staff gave us the guided tour of The Residence afterwards. Not at all like the stuffy ‘Gentleman’s Clubbe’ I’d imagined it to be. Upstairs, the Masterchef cast of thousands were having their end-of-term party. Did  I detect a death ray glance from a certain chippy nordie chef standing in the doorway? Probably not. Got coat anyway and left.

My first encounter with Chinese food was in Manchester way back in the last century.  I was doing evening classes, I forget the subject. During a break-time conversation it emerged that Johnson, one of the guys in the class, was the proprietor of a Chinese restaurant. Furthermore, he kindly issued an open invitation to a couple of us to dine there, gratis.  A few months later, after a mini pub crawl, we decided to take him up on it. There was no sign of our friend in the restaurant but we were assured by one of the waiters that “Mr.Wong be here very soon.”

We sat down at table to wait. A full hour later, Johnson had not appeared. “We’d better eat something,” I said. Pete, my dining companion, no more versed in Cantonese cuisine than I was ordered a few random dishes. Our enquiry for the boss man yielded another “Mr.Wong be here very soon”. Repeat this cameo ad infinitum, you’ll get an idea how the evening went. We couldn’t up and leave, at some point we discovered that neither of us had any money. “Just have to keep eating until Johnson arrives,” said Pete. Fast forward to ten -to-two in the morning. Behold a brace of full-to-bursting diners in an otherwise empty restaurant; tired waiters getting ever surlier. We thought of doing a runner until the kitchen door opened and the chef appeared cleaver in hand. Then the front door swung open and in came Johnson Wong and his girl friend. “What you lads doing here?” he enquired. He sat down with us and summoned up four Cognacs. Fortunately, he’d remembered his invitation, phew!

My appetite for Chinese food was whetted that night. A year or two later I was cockahoop as Manchester’s own city centre Chinatown developed. I was equally overjoyed when Chinese and other Asian restaurants brought the sun to the bleak culinary landscape of Dublin’s Parnell Street a few years ago. I eat on this strip regularly. Each time I go, a hitherto unknown-to-me diner impinges on my consciousness. I hadn’t previously been to Lee Kee, an unpretentious little place on the south side of the street. It came recommended by a Chinese friend who told me it existed mainly to feed impecunious Chinese students but was certainly foreign devil-friendly.

We followed this by soup. I am a mad fan of hot and sour soup or ‘sweet, sour and hot’ soup as Lee Kee’s version was called. This one was acquired only after discussion with the pleasant waitress who initially seemed confused as to what I wanted. She seemed to have got it right but the soup when it arrived, though it had all the components – the chicken and pork shreds, the mushrooms, the ginger, etc., was not sweet, sour nor hot, except in the purely calorific sense.

Décor was basic, with tables an assortment of plain light wood and glass-topped, all spotless. The menu is a mere five pages, contrasting with the ‘family bibles’ favoured by others. The most exotic dish on the bill of fare seemed to be whelks with ginger and spring onion. No sign of ‘husband and wife lung slices’or ‘hot pocket spicy wonder’. There were a few dishes lurking on the back page that I took to be dim sum and I accordingly ordered two – a pork dumpling and a prawn cheng fen. The latter is a favourite of mine and a good tester as this simple folded semolina pancake stands or falls on the quality of the prawns enclosed within. Lee Kee’s were good but not amazing. The dumplings were hearty and tasty and there were a good number of them.

We also sampled something called Guandong duck which turned out to be not  dissimilar to Peking/Beijing duck,  the kind that comes with cucumber, cabbage, a thick fruity sauce and pancakes (this was also listed on the menu). Though adequate, I’ve had better; the duck was a tad dry. The sweet crispy pork, on the other hand was knockout. The firm, crispy batter coating on the slices of pork loin was not fazed by the sticky sauce, which had an appealing lemony zing. Throughout the meal we drank good, plain Chinese tea. Tsingdao beer was available. We explored the two wines, listed at a reasonable €15 a bottle. The red was good old quaffable Jacob’s Creek, the white something quite nasty (I’d had it before elsewhere).

For the €28 spend it would be churlish to criticize too heavily. The cooking could have been a little more delicate. It would be good to unravel the mystery as to why the soup didn’t do what it said on the label. Lee Kee’s ambience would depend heavily on the presence of a host of chattering chopstick clickers. But honest enough and I’d certainly go back for an informal lunch.

Lee Kee, 100 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 Tel: 01 804 4517

Food ***

Wine *

Service ***

Ambience *

Overall **1/2