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There are many perfectly rendered archetypes in the work of animator Brad Bird – the “human” characteristics conferred on the robot in The Iron Giant, for instance, or Bird's own voiceover of the demented designer Edna Mode in The Incredibles – but Bird trumps even his own high standards with the extraordinary food critic, Anton Ego, in his brilliant movie, “Ratatouille”.

October provokes the most extreme reactions. “There was a splendid, majestic plenitude about the sunlight which burned all day, and then seemed to switch itself off abruptly in the early evening, when all at once the air became very cold, and dusk fell quickly. The sun had a special warmth which you never felt in summer and which never came again in winter... The land was at rest”.

In her fine book, “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy”, the historian Barbara Ehrenreich notes that “suffering remains the almost exclusive preoccupation of professional psychology. Journals in the field have published forty-five thousand articles in the last thirty years on depression, but only four hundred on joy”.

David McKittrick's comment, which I am going to post below, came through the contact section of the website. We're always interested in getting feedback on the places you visit. If you had a good - or, God forbid - bad experience when using the Bridgestone Guides, use this spot to let us know.

We are just updating our website to include details of all the farmers markets around the country. If you know of a good market, or sadly, if you hear of one closing - then share the info here.

Can't find a place that someone somewhere recommended? Lost touch with a place you used to visit? If you have any questions about the good people in Irish food then ask the Bridgestone Guides. And, if we can't help you one of our readers/bloggers might be able to.

"Americans don't eat food. They eat food products".
The brilliant American writer Michael Pollan made that statement,
during the course of a lecture at the Slow Food Terra Madre congress,
in Turin last October.
Even as I scribbled it in my notebook, it gave me a shiver. Here we
all were, tens of thousands of us, at the bi-annual Slow Food bash
which is a celebration of global food bio-diversity, and Mr Pollan
was telling us that, because the United States' food economy is
utterly dependent on corn - and on only 6 cultivars of corn -

John writes: A little note from the road. A night with the family at James Kehoe's svelte new hotel at the venerable Lord Bagenal Inn in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow. A glam new building, brilliant rooms and in The Waterfront restaurant, a great space for George Kehoe to show his stuff. Mr Kehoe has worked with some of the best talents in contemporary Irish cuisine – Aidan Byrne, Paul Flynn, Derry Clarke – and it shows: the cooking in the LB is top-notch, and even manages to pull off those molecular cooking elements – foams, savoury ice creams – that so many chefs get all wrong.

A number of you have contacted us to say that, while you like the guide, we've missed out one of your favourite places. We love getting this sort of feedback (though we hate missing good places). If you think we've overlooked somewhere, please tell us about it...

Is Galway Hooker the best new beer in Ireland since O'Hara's stout? What's your favourite artisan tipple?