The man from the local enterprise board is congratulating Kenmare Food Carnival Chairperson Karen Coakley: “You’ve gone past stages one and two and you’ve started the festival at stage three,” says he.
Possibly, he is marvelling at perceived chutzpah or downright brass neck — while food festivals proliferate all around the country at a fiercesome rate, the advice is always to start slowly, develop organically over a number of years. Not Kenmare. Mind you, Kenmare has being ‘doing food’ for decades, so far ahead of the national curve as to be almost deserving of some class of independent culinary statehood.
The thumb first brought me to Kenmare, almost thirty years ago and does so again today albeit, this time, pressing phone keys for a spot of ‘twitchhiking’ rather than several hours of old school hitchhiking. But skipping out of the car at the top of the town, the initial sensation remains the same as it always does on arrival here: giddy, childlike excitement; where, oh where to begin?!
We begin the gentle tumble down the length of a swarming Main St, tourists and locals alike, blinking in the glorious sun, drawn out from whatever dark corners they have spent the preceding months sheltering from the ongoing National Deluge. Down we amble, past the shops and pubs, all en fete, sporting the colourful Carnival livery, down we head towards the beating heart, the farmer’s market, at the bottom of the hill, by the Square. No better place to take the festival’s pulse and all the vital signs are very encouraging indeed.
Carlos Luque, the original chef at Cork’s Boqueria is almost completely cleaned out of tapas yet the market still has another six hours to run. First bite of his spicy crab on roast pepper with mashed potato is explanation enough: succulent, sweet crab on meaty red pepper encircled in piped creamy mash potato. He is still sorely missed in Cork.
Benoit Lorge is selling some of his exquisite chocolate and confectionary in between reconnaisance missions wearing his other hat as one of the festival committee. There's a guy doing fair impression of Crocodile Dundee knocking out barbecued kangaroo skewers and a little further down the line, underneath the cool, inviting folds of what could be a bedouin tent as much as a market stall, is a banquet of vegetarian treats.
It is a lovely mix of stallholders. ‘Blow-ins’, Ballyhoura Mushrooms, Annie’s Roasts, BBQ Joes, dotted about amongst an equally sterling selection of ‘locals’, St Tola Goat’s Cheese, Strawberry Field. A great big red double decker bus And everywhere there is seafood —in Kenmare, they have long realised the sea is more than just a handy place to park your yacht. There are three or four stands offering cooked mussels, oysters ‘balming out’ on beds of ice; the fish man is cleaned out almost as quickly as Carlos.
Back up the town, onto Henry St, the real ‘culinary quarter’, tables are set up outside selling little tasters of the wares on offer in the myriad food establishments along the way. Jam’s stall, across from their premises, down an alleyway, is ‘manned’ by a woman in a pink Edwardian frock and bonnet as fetching as the cupcakes before her.
More seafood outside Packies, a delicious yet plaintive reminder that chef Martin Hallissey is out of town for the weekend at a wedding and won’t be open for business that evening.
Gerry O’Shea lounges in the sun outside his Prego restaurant which becomes a de facto Field Kitchen for recovering revellers over the weekend. He and chef Tamsin are manning a stall of venison sausage tapas, the proceeds in this case going to cancer research. “The recession maybe caught a few people in the town on the hop,” says Gerry, “but ….” He’s content to leave the picture before us, heaving throngs of locals and tourists alike, moving from stall to stall, like slowly grazing cattle, to complete his sentiment.
Upstairs in the Skyline Gallery, Christian from the Sheen Falls kitchen doles out some delicious salmon to nibble while taking in some lovely food-themed photos by Mike O’Toole and Eoin Kavanagh.
Kate O’Shea from Nom Nom Café stands with a coffee in one hand and a glass of one in the other (‘a tasting across the road,’ she indicates with a broad wink) hymning the praises of her own beetroot pate and cheesecake brownies; a nibble or two and we’re joining in on the chorus.
In the Pobail Scoil, they’ve set up a theatre for cooking demos. Everyone from the bloggerati – Helena Moloney (Helenaskitchen), Niamh Sheils (eatlikeagirl), Yvonne Carty (heypesto) – to Martijn Kajuiter, and Darina herself does a turn. And everyone of them very generously donates their services for the inaugural festival.
As evening sets in, a jazz band takes to the park stage in the Square. Over the railings the lovely old time carnival comes into its own, lights twinkling in the dusk, a soundtrack of hurdy-gurdy organ and childish squeals of delight pealing off into the night air.
Some of the flagship festival events are on tonight, festival banquets courtesy of chef Bruce Mulcahy at the Park Hotel and chef Heiko at Sheen Falls Lodge, while chef James Mulchrone is doing a special pop-up banquet at Jam. But late arrival and high demand means we find ourselves ‘off-piste’ in Prego again, this time for a pizza. The waitress is highly intrigued by my choice of toppings so I offer her a piece. She takes it. Prego is that kind of place. It’s late enough when we leave but, in Kenmare, that’s 'round about when the night begins.
The Kenmare Food Carnival is a keeper – see you here next year!
Karen Coakley, Chairperson, Kenmare Food Carnival & Darina Allen - Photo by Joe McNamee
