Plate of the Year - Wild Salmon at the Brook Lodge Inn
The menu explained: “From our wood smoker, wild Irish salmon out of the River Nore, with wild sea beet laverbreads and a wild cod's roe spread.”
It could just as easily have said: “This is the best thing you will eat all year!” Mick Murphy's salmon, with Evan Doyle's laverbread and Tim Daly's cod's roe, was a dish that was simply profound – profoundly flavoured, profoundly curated, and profoundly delivered as part of the Wild & Slow wild Foods dinner, a 12-course masterpiece that the Brook Lodge crew served without dropping a beat.
Person of the Year Evan Doyle
If all Evan Doyle ever did was to have created and run the Brook Lodge Inn, he would be forever recognised as the foremost hotelier of his generation. But running the country's only organic hotel is actually just one of the many things he does, for he also organises the annual Taste Council Summer School, hosts the Wild & Slow jamboree every autumn, forages like a demon, campaigns and cajoles for a better food culture, and he does all these things as well as being super hands-on with the Brook Lodge. In a quiet way, Evan Doyle is hugely influential.
