Sally's blog

B&B of the Year - The Stop, Galway
How cult can you get? However you assess cult status, The Stop tops it, and then some. Russ and Emer's modest house betrays their gallerist backgrounds with the precise and perfect placing of every object, and the result is some sort of feg shui hospitality heaven. The Stop B&B

Pub of the Year - Levis' Corner House, Ballydehob
Joe and Caroline have rebirthed the legendary Levis' bar in Ballydehob in the most sympathetic way possible. The O'Learys have somehow managed to retain the unique ambience that Joe's grand-aunts, Nell and Julia, blessed the pub with, whilst the addition of music sessions and craft beers has made the space contemporary and funky. Levis' is a template for the Irish country pub in 2016. Levis Corner House

Shop of the Year - Glasrai and Goodies
Glasrai & Goodies is a tiny tabernacle, and it is every food lover’s dream. Siobhan Lawlor's tiny shop is crammed to the joists – literally – with the best things Ireland offers to eat and drink, all of them selected and then presented with Siobhan’s expert aesthetic eye. There is no more beguiling a destination to shop in Ireland, the food room that is like a food womb. Glasrai & Goodies

Communicator of the Year - Mark Moriarty
It’s one thing to be handed the job of “The Face of Irish Food”, as Mark Moriarty was following his win in the San Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year competition. But to be given the mantle when you are 23 years old is breathtaking. Mr Moriarty didn’t let it phase him one bit, and he closed out the Food on the Edge symposium, following on from some of the world’s greatest chefs, as to the manner born.

Straight Board, Straight Knife, Straight Slice
I’ve been late in submitting this one. You’d think it’d be the easiest piece to write and topic to cover but as it turns out it’s anything but.
You see, everyone has different ideas on knives. I can’t think of another essential element of the kitchen that divides opinion more than knives.
Some Chefs are happy to batter away with a few essentials, others not so. I’m pretty convinced that Daniel my Sous Chef would prefer for you to run away with his girlfriend than to see you touch, let alone use, his knives.

When you have been around for what seems like an awfully long time, people take you for granted. That’s fine: that’s human nature. We seek the new and, then, occasionally, we recall the veterans and ask ourselves: what’s going on there, now?

If you have been around for well nigh three decades like, say, Cork’s Crawford Gallery Café, then it’s terribly easy to be overlooked, even in a city where culinary longevity is written into the constitution. But to overlook the Crawford, today, is a food lover’s error because the Crawford cooking, today, is a delight.

Whilst Dublin leads the field in the number of new restaurant openings, it hasn’t exactly been quiet in my own part of the world, so now seems as good a time as any to offer a roundup of what’s going on in the dining scene in Waterford.
 

The back story of the Teeling Whiskey Company will be familiar to many. In 1987 the mining and whiskey entrepreneur John Teeling founded the fledging Cooley Distillery, which over the years he grew into one of the world’s most respected distilleries, often flying under the radar in its home country.

Skip to 2012 and the Teeling family sold the business to drinks giant Jim Beam for north of €70 million.

If you took the standard modern restaurant, then took it apart and reassembled it, using only essential parts, you would wind up with Fish Shop.

There is nothing here, in the room, on the menu, the wine list, that doesn’t need to be here.

Druidshakespeare
Druid celebrated their 40th anniversary by tearing Shakespeare’s Henriad quartet apart, and showing how the themes of the bard never age, but are with us still. Marty Rea’s Richard 11 is one of the greatest theatrical inventions of the age.

Black Lives Matter
In the year of BLM, four great records articulated the themes of the protest movement: