CHAR: Summer 2019

CHAR

MATTY MATHESON

FREE SUMMER 2019

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Digging into food culture in Ireland.

13 - 16 JUNE 2019

4 day festival | Worldclass chefs | Top restaurants | 60 dishes Over 150 masterclasses | Live entertainment plus more

Book now at tasteofdublin.ie Tickets from E15* *Booking fees apply

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Would you like to advertise in our autumn issue?

Email eric@districtmagazine.ie or craig@districtmagazine.ie

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Hoppin’ mad like John McClane at the Nakatomi Plaza.

Yippy Ki Yay!!

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39/40 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Serving up delicious dishes, bursting with seasonal flavours and perfect for sharing.

Enjoy a high-end gastronomy experience in a casual dining setting seven days a week.

Nominated for Best Gastro Bar & Best Cocktail Experience - Irish Restaurant Awards 2019 cafeenseine.ie | @cafeenseine | (01) 677 4567

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“It’s not a case of trying to teach but rather remind people that we are an island and we’re very proud of the bounty we have around it.”

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“She’s going to have to absorb quite a lot of information, quite a lot of which might not be so comfortable and might be a little bit hard to take but it’s all for her benefit to get her on her chosen path.”

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29/03/2019

09:39

We love bees.

The honeybee is the single most important pollinator of food crops in our ecosystem. Bees have been having a really rough time over the last few decades. Their numbers are falling rapidly due to loss of habitat and intensive agriculture.

It’s a lot more than just your honey at breakfast that’s at stake - every ingredient in every meal depends on bees.

They are a critical link in food security for us all.

Let’s try and give them back as much habitat as we can!

There are lots of easy things we can all do to help.

See for yourself at www.pollinators.ie Tang Café - 9a Abbey Street Lwr + 23c Dawson Street www.tang.ie

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Thank you for supporting us this year.

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Matty Matheson Xico: Peter Wolohan Keelan Higgs Holly Dalton Mex in the city Sweet dreams are made of cheese Delicioso Brazilian food Na Séasúir Mincing words Eat it like a Local: Lilliput Stores Chef in Focus: Stephen Gibson Guinness Advisor Seasonal Recipe: Spicy Carrot

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Credits Editor | Eric Davidson Design | Annie Moriarty Photography | George Voronov Creative Direction | Annie & George Features | Caitríona Devery Operations Director | Craig Connolly

A food and drink cut

by District Magazine It’s never too soon for a makeover, and that’s exactly what we’ve done with CHAR’s latest print edition. Our lead designer Annie Moriarty has been locked away in the studio re-shaping the publication in your very hands and we’re all immensely proud of the results.

For the second issue we’re chuffed to have gotten the opportunity to sit down with widely-adored Canadian chef Matty Matheson who’s the star of Viceland's ‘It's Suppertime’ and ‘Dead Set on Life’, as well as the author of ‘Matty Matheson: A Cookbook’. He went on a tour of Dublin’s finest restaurants while he was here for a book signing in Hen’s Teeth and Craig Connolly was able to get some time with him for a chat, with photography by George Voronov.

Elsewhere in this edition, we sit down with chefs Keelan Higgs of Variety Jones and Holly Dalton of Gertrude, as well as spotlights on Mexican and Brazilian food in Dublin city by Caitríona Devery. We also get some wise words from the elusive brain behind Instagram’s Guinness Advisor.

We’re digging into Irish food culture for you, and this is just the appetiser.

— Eric

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Matty Matheson Life through cooking

“Everyone’s got a fucking story, it’s just some people are better at telling it than others.”

There are chefs who are known around the world for their Michelin-star restaurants.

There are TV chefs who are famous for making little kids healthy. Some chefs are famous for calling people idiot sandwiches and saying ‘fuck’ a lot. Some chefs make millions, other chefs are memes.

But the world has never met a chef like Matty Matheson. Matty was born in the port city of Saint John on the east coast of Canada, and spent most of his young life in Fort Erie. After a rocky road into adolescence, into teens, into young adulthood, he eventually made food his only vice. After dropping out of a Toronto culinary school in his early 20’s, Matty went on to work in a number of restaurants in the Canadian metropolis, eventually ending up in Parts & Labour as executive chef, a position he held until 2017.

His enigmatic and frantic personality led him to appear on Vice’s show ‘Munchies’, which would serve as something for an audition, as he was later picked up to host Viceland's ‘It's Suppertime’ and ‘Dead Set on Life’, both shows changing him from a cult icon to an internet superhero.

He’s since ventured to many corners of YouTube's food halls, including Hot Ones, as well as making several appearances on US late night talk shows.

Last October he released his first cookbook, ‘Matty Matheson: A Cookbook’.

He was a man in demand during his short visit to Dublin, signing hundreds of books and posing for countless photos with fans as the queue snaking through Fade Street got bigger and bigger. However, we were able to nab some time with him in Hen’s Teeth for an interview and shoot.

What’s that noise? There’s a fuckin’ baby here…

I wanted to name my kid Fang or Duff.

Fistlord? Did someone say they’d name their baby Fistlord? Who has the playlist? I’m not listening to this god damn conscious hip hop

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shit. Avril Lavigne? We should actually only play Nickelback.

Ok, let’s do this. Did you always aspire to write a cookbook? I know you mentioned upstairs that your career has been based on riffing, but was there a moment you realised that you wanted to put your memories and stories on paper?

Yeah, but I never thought I was going to be in a position to be able to write a cookbook. Only master chefs ever got to write cookbooks. It was something that was so far away from where I ever thought I would be. I guess I got to a position where I could throw my hat in the ring and see what’s up. Maybe like three years ago, I decided I was going to write a book proposal, shop it around and we went from there.

In the book you mention food is more about moments with your family, growing up, memories, how important was it to make a book that was personal to you?

It was everything. Obviously it was an easy story to tell, because it’s your own. I just told a genuine, kind of vulnerable, real story about my life through my culinary lens.

Do you feel this is your autobiography, or is that something else you’d like to do?

No, I would write a completely different story. This is through that culinary lens, but there’s definitely a memoir in me.

Any time soon?

No, I’ve got to live a little longer!

I feel like I’ve just begun.

The photography in the book is very different to traditional cookbooks.

Was that a conscious decision?

Yeah for sure, I got Pat O’Rourke who’s a buddy who’s a skateboarder who takes amazing photos. I wanted him to shoot the tonal landscape photos, and it’s really tough to shoot food so I got this old, which they won’t mind me saying, classic food photographer. So it was this easy thing, there was no bullshit, which I liked.

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“Only master chefs ever got to write cookbooks.

It was something that was so far away from where I ever thought I would be.”

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Pat O’Rourke is this amazing kid from Toronto and he took photos in a New York Times best selling book. Which is kind of sick, you know?

To put someone on like that. And to make it with him was so fun. Travelling around The Maritimes [the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island] with Pat, showing him where I came from was really cool.

With your career, Rang [Nguyen] was your mentor when you were coming through. Do you have someone that you’re a mentor to now? Do you feel that’s important?

Not right now because I’m solo. It’s just me drifting around. Right now I have two pizzerias, but I’m opening up my dream restaurant, that will be something that I’m looking forward to and maybe someone will think I’m a mentor [from that], but I don’t think it’s my place to say. I’m definitely not mentoring anybody, I’m putting my shit together and trying to figure out life.

How do you balance all of those commitments?

Communication!

Is it hard to keep standards high in your restaurants when you’re travelling the world?

I have a really good team that I’m building for that restaurant. I want to do a lot of things, I don’t want to just do restaurants.

I want to make TV, I want to make internet content, I want to write my own memoir, maybe I make a movie, maybe I start a clothing line, you only have one life and I want to see how much shit I can do and smash and see what the fuck’s up.

With Dead Set you travelled a lot.

What city or country’s food surprised you the most?

I don’t know where surprised me, but definitely Vietnam is the fucking best.

Having the opportunity to go there and have Rang show me around was so amazing, it was beautiful.

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You just finished shooting the show Just A Dash. Can you tell me a little about it?

Just A Dash is me. It’s my cooking show, I paid for it, there’s no direction so I guess I directed it. I did everything. It was cool, I got to get my buddies back together, my OG crew, we shot it in my house, and I think this will be the best cooking show I’ve ever done.

It’s how I like to perform, how I like to cook, how I like to present myself.

Is wanting to have that control something you need?

I don’t think it’s about control, I just don’t need it. I don’t need somebody to tell me how to cook. I don’t need somebody to tell me how to be funny. I just kind of figured it out, I figured what I’m really good at and what my lane is. I’m just trying to make my lane as strong as I can and live within those lines, as blurred as those lines are. I’m just trying to be more me. I just want to make the funniest, best cooking show I can. My goal is to make a very funny, real cooking show.

On projects like Dead Set, is the most rewarding aspect that you get to sit down and break bread with people in their homes?

It’s always about the people, man. It’s about the people, where they’re coming from, what they’re doing, where they’re at, that kind of shit is really important. Everyone’s got a fucking story, it’s just some people are better at telling it than others. Sometimes you have to pull it out of people, dig a little deeper.

Do you find that people are more likely to let their guard down when they're cooking?

Yeah, I think it’s when people are doing something that they’re comfortable with, when they’re showing you something that they really enjoy. They’re excited, they’re cooking for you, they’re comfortable, cooking in your home is a really nice thing, so it’s a great opportunity to be yourself. Showing somebody your food is something really honest and vulnerable at the same time.

“Showing somebody your food is something really honest and vulnerable at the same time.”

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One thing that really stood out to me when watching the show was when you visited Nunavut and you were discussing the banning of seal hunts.Were you always aware of responsible hunting?

It’s something that’s real. I didn’t grow up hunting, but it’s something that I learned through cooking. If you’re a chef and you’ve never slaughtered an animal yourself I think you’re being naive. I don’t think you need to be out there slaughtering animals every day, or working for a year in a slaughterhouse, but I think you need to understand what it means to take a life. You need to understand what that holds.

Shooting a bird is different to taking the life of a sheep, that’s pretty fucking heavy.

That shit resonated with me and made things very clear, it made me realise not to fuck around. It’s really important that people know where food comes from.

Do you think people responded so well to those aspects of Dead Set because you were learning on the spot?

For sure, I’m in the same position as everybody watching. I know how to cook, but I don’t know every single thing about food. I’m just trying to figure it out too, and maybe that’s part of the reason why things are going so well.

Last question, because there’s a queue of people outside Hen’s Teeth right now waiting to see you. What was the best food you've tasted in Dublin so far?

The best food was Assassination Custard.

It’s so rare that you have a restaurant that is so genuine. So simple, so brilliant, so delicious. I don’t think they’re even aware of what they have… They must be in some sense, but it’s such a great place. It’s rare to have places like that anywhere, so I was really stoked to be able to experience that. @mattymatheson

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Xico Peter Wolohan As a young, budding chef Peter Wolohan started off working in kitchens taking summer jobs. Right beside his family house was a hotel which became like a second home to him. That hotel sponsored him through college and gave him all manner of experience, from old-school fine dining, to learning logistics, to dipping his toes into pastry cheffing.

“You got to see every side of operations,” he says. “I’ve been a chef for 30 years, and mostly hotels, very traditional French background; what most Irish chefs would go through, until recently. About five or six years ago I started with this group and we set up 37 Dawson Street.”

Peter was there from the day one, amidst all the chaos of a new restaurant.

This relationship eventually lead to him coming on board with Baggot Street’s “underground Mexican styled party cavern” Xico, an opportunity he seized firmly, especially with his self-confessed “addiction to chillies” and love of Mexican food.

While his experience of cooking Mexican cuisine professionally was limited, his admiration for the culture surrounding it was what drove him.

“I cooked it at home, but when I say I cooked “Mexican food”, it was basic.

We came here, we got some mexican consultants in to show us, and that was an eye opener. First just learning the ingredients, it was great, because you realise, ‘That’s the flavour I’ve been looking for for years!’.

"The techniques are so different.

A culinary term I use is, 'You burn the shit out of stuff’ [laughs]. Some other things are the same, like braising meats for, a long, long

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time. Everything gets a 24 hour dry over marinade, and our ribs, our briskets, get six to eight hours in the oven.”

While Peter says he can’t stress enough how good the service in Xico is, he explains that a lot of the hard work is done before the restaurant opens.

“There are no shortcuts, it’s just time, that’s all there is to it. And, again, burning stuff. I have a pot of chicken tinga on at the moment. I have a box of tomatoes in flame, and you want to burn them black. It’s funny when you have trainees coming in being like, ‘Oh I took them off for you’, and you’re like, ‘Stop taking them off! I know it seems weird but I want to burn them!’.”

Xico is perhaps just as well known fortaquitos, tostadas and other Mexican delights as it is for its parties, however the food is still paramount here. Much thought went into how Peter and the Xico team would approach creating the menu.

“We’re a party bar, we’re not fine dining, I want to stir up the imagination, I want our food to be food where you can sit down and have a drink.

What I love is when people get the food and they’re like, ‘Wow, I wasn’t expecting that’. I love surprising people like that, for me, a taco is the perfect food. It can be as complex as you want or as simple as you want, but it’s a couple of bites of something really interesting. People think Mexican is just spicy, spicy, spicy, but it’s all about balance.

Take our chicken taco, if you eat the chicken on its own it is really spicy. But you’re getting avocado puree, you’re getting pumpkin seeds for crunch... You want spice, but you want something to go with the spice.”

“There are no shortcuts, it’s just time, that’s all there is to it.”

As well as balance, it is attention to detail that has Xico leading the charge on bringing ‘real’ Mexican food to Dublin city.

Peter explains that while he loves burritos, it’s difficult to be as refined with so much going on.

“I like taking a different approach because things can get lost. I love Japanese food, three or four ingredients working in harmony together. Mexican sauces are much more complex, but again it is one element, it depends what you add to it.”

Even though it’s clear Xico has a laid back atmosphere, it’s still refreshing to see how much freedom and trust Peter and his team have been given with the menu.

“It’s great that I am trusted,” he beams.

“We’re always planning new things and trying things out.”

Right now Peter is working on the restaurant’s spring/summer menu. It’s full of light and delicious mexican style dishes, with plenty of vegan and vegetarian options.

Xico’s drinks menu (because if you’re there, you’re probably there to party) is “summery” with lots of fresh and fruity cocktails.

They’ve also added some alcohol free cocktails, with the option to add CBD oil! xico.ie

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Keelan Higgs Firing it up at Variety Jones

“You need to love it, you need to be able to leave your negativity, your personal shit at the door.�

I am still thinking about the chicken liver parfait I had in Variety Jones a few weeks back. It was light and silky; hovering between rich and delicate, full-on meltiness with a subtle kick. It was so lush we were tempted to ask for teaspoons. Their oyster snack has been praised elsewhere and rightly so. Oysters pin attention to the present moment and cucumber adds the perfect back note. The Jerusalem artichoke skin was an intense version of itself, a caramelised, sticky bite full of texture and depth.

Being partial to a trout, we chose the sharing dish of a whole fish grilled over the live fire which is a central part of the kitchen at Variety Jones. Served with shiitake mushrooms, garlic butter, gnocchi, leek and chanterelle fondue. The mushrooms were cute, the shiitake holding their own, deliciously slippery in a buttery sauce that was luxuriant and herby. The dessert of apple cake, apple jam and brown butter custard was a winsome and satisfying end.

Variety Jones is a gutsy, charismatic spot where the wines are natural and the food makes you feel good. It was opened

by Keelan Higgs and his brother Aaron just before Christmas.

Keelan has earned his stripes and weathered storms in some of the top kitchens in Ireland over the past decade or more. You get the sense he is delighted to be doing things his way here.

He grew up around restaurants and from early on wanted to be a chef, aside from a brief “teen angsty phase” where he wanted to help people and considered becoming a psychologist. In a way that desire hasn’t gone away.

“The more years I put into cooking the more I realise food and cooking helps people as well,” Keelan says.

“It brings people together and helps people communicate.”

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Keelan’s father ran restaurants and warned him off being a chef, but he was drawn to food and went to DIT to study Culinary Arts. A few months in Patrick Guilbaud as part of college was “the kick up the arse to know what real food is about”.

Ross Lewis helped him find a placement in Italy, at the 2 Michelin star restaurant Arnolfo in the sunflower-surrounded Colle di Val d'Elsa in Tuscany. The restaurant was very much ingredient-led, creating dishes from what the local environment provided on a day by day basis.

“Every day the chef would arrive at 12.30pm from the market with whatever fish was there, courgettes with flowers, a baby suckling pig.”

After college he did a year at Chapter One. Next he was junior, sous and head chef in Locks, followed by a stint in the Greenhouse, then back to Locks.

The second time around, Keelan teamed up with Conor O’Dowd as co-owner and Paul McNamara as silent partner. There were challenges; different priorities in terms of what they each wanted from the business.

There was a falling out. Keelan left Locks for the second time with a bad taste in his mouth.

“It turned my life upside down. Aaron worked with me there, my little brother Cameron, my sisters had done marketing and branding. We’d put a lot of work into it.”

The experiences at Locks and across the Dublin food scene gave Keelan a strong sense of what he wanted — and didn’t want — in terms of restaurants.

Independence was at the heart of this.

“I always wanted my own restaurant,” he confirms. “I make goals in my head, and have done all my life, in my career. By such and such an age… Like by 18 I want to be working in a top end restaurant, by 24 I want to work in Michelin star restaurant… By 32 I

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“If you’re in a residential area you’re stuck with Mary’s Caesar salad that she has every week that you can’t take off the menu.”

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“The more years I put into cooking the more I realise food and cooking helps people as well. It brings people together and helps people communicate.”

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want to open a restaurant on my own. I think there’s something in me, and probably the rest of my siblings as well, that we don’t like working for other people.”

With Variety Jones he was clear on wanting freedom.

“I always felt that inner city was where we wanted to be. Right bang in the centre of town allows you to be a bit edgier, a bit more creative. If you’re in a residential area you’re stuck with Mary’s Caesar salad that she has every week that you can’t take off the menu.”

The menu at Variety Jones built for sharing. He says it was the way his family ate growing up, “There’s something ingrained in me, that likes to eat like that. It’s a great way of getting people to relax, break down those barriers”. Initially, the idea of sharing dishes felt more Mediterranean than Irish to me, but Keelan convinces me that it’s an Irish way.

“It’s based on those principles of sitting round the table and enjoying each others’ company. If you take the trad session, the music is the medium to get people to communicate. I think food can be that same medium.”

The team here is close-knit and includes Keelan’s brother Aaron who is integral to the whole mix. The two of them overhauled the Liberties-located premises in the run up to the opening. Keelan says “we worked in Locks before, but that was a different animal. It wouldn’t have happened without him here, putting the place together”.

In addition, they have sommelier Vanda Ivancic, who worked with Keelan at Luna and who Keelan says is “badass”. Her wine list has a lot of natural and organic wines and changes regularly. Keelan says, “it wouldn’t be the same without her. She makes super pairings with the dishes”.

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Keelan stresses the importance of a strong team, “creative people who are passionate about what they do”. He wants to invest in people and keep them on board, saying “we want to bring others along with us to our next projects”. By that he means other restaurants or bars. He says, “thinking long term we want to bring more positive stuff to Dublin, more things that people enjoy, things that are real”.

In spite of great reviews from almost all the national critics, he has a laid-back attitude towards the vagaries of the press.

He admits it has an effect; the phone started hopping after Catherine Cleary’s review for instance. But he thinks hype can be a problem.

“People reading reviews, they come in with expectations. The battle’s already been lost. It’s been built up so much. You can’t live and die on what the critics say, we have to focus on our product and our customers.”

The food has a strong signature, confidently combining influences and styles.

This assemblage is natural to Keelan and he sees what he does as Irish.

“I see Ireland as a melting pot at this stage of different cultures. I was rolling fresh pasta in Guilbaud’s before I ever went to Italy. If people in your average household are cooking [food from all over the world] every week, how is that not Irish food?

The pool of what Irish is just keeps getting bigger.”

Food, as part of culture, naturally evolves through adoption and mutation. He talks about the process of expanding repertoires.

“Take me growing up in Ireland, those things become natural things you cook with, natural flavours you work with in a kitchen, they form my tastes. That makes them a part of Irish cooking, because I’m Irish, I’ve learned to cook in Ireland, I’m cooking in Ireland, and these are the things

I’m comfortable using. It’s like precedence in legal terms; it was used before then it’s amalgamated into law, and it’s the same with food. That is culture, it develops.”

He thinks things have been evolving in interesting ways in Dublin recently and that chefs are at the heart of that.

“I felt when I was putting this together that there was a new wave coming and that we would be a part of that.

Chef-driven restaurants are a good thing.

I know there have been a few already, the likes of Bastible and Clanbrassil House and Forest Avenue. I think places need more personality and I think this place has my personality in it, and the personality of people who work here.”

I ask Keelan after working abroad how he was sure he wanted to open a restaurant here.

“This is my home,” he responds.

“That’s why I wanted to set up a restaurant in Ireland. You need people to do that, to influence what’s going on here.

People might say who does he think he is for saying that, but you’re a part of it, a part of the picture.”

I follow up asking Keelan what he thinks makes a good chef.

“I always say passion, love and conviction. You need to love it, you need to be able to leave your negativity, your personal shit at the door. When I get up in the morning and I come to work, there’s a burning inside me. I know it sounds a bit silly. But I need to get something done, I need to attack the day.”

He says a head chef should be able to lead by example.

“I think I could go into any kitchen in the world and do a service. That’s what any serious chef in the world should be

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able to do. A head chef should be able to jump on any section in the kitchen and do it as good if not better than any one else.”

The chef profession is often considered to be in crisis in Dublin; there’s talk of a chronic shortage. Keelan think the problem is systemic.

“I think there’s a problem inherent in this industry where you’re expected to work to your own detriment, work 80 hours, get paid nothing, and have no life. It’s the chef’s mentality of martyrdom, you have to wear it as your badge of honour. I don’t think there is a chef crisis, I think there’s a disparity between work done and work paid.

The restauranteurs need to change the way they do business.”

He’s taking a novel approach to the finances of Variety Jones in the interests of fairness, “I pay everyone the same thing.

We all get paid the same. If I’m hiring someone else, we have to look at it from a realistic perspective, will we have to do another service? I try not to do things cloak and dagger like, or under the table as I’ve seen in the industry. I don’t want to be involved in the same stuff that has pushed young chefs out. I know a restaurant where the pastry chef was getting paid €320 a week for 90 hours a week. He was so run down his fingernails were falling off. €320 a week. That’s a joke. Slave labour.”

There’s certainly a commitment with Keelan and Variety Jones to do things in a straight up way. The emphasis on informality is refreshing especially with the food at this level.

“We want to create a place where people can feel at home and we want to enjoy what we’re doing. I don’t see why to get a top quality meal you have to have the tablecloths and dickie bows and pay an arm and a leg.” @variety_jones

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Guinness Open Gate Brewery is set to host a beer, food, fire & music festival Meatopia was a staple of New York City until the crew behind it decided people east of the Atlantic deserved to experience what the epic food festival is all about.

For the last 6 years it has been celebrated annually in London, and in 2017 it finally made its way to the home of Guinness in historic Dublin 8.

From July 5 ­– 7 the third annual GUINNESS X MEATOPIA will transform the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, home to beer innovation and experimentation at St. James’s Gate, into a festival devoted to beer, food, fire and music.

But there's a twist this year. Get this.

The chefs and brewers have challenged each other to create and match unique brews and dishes. These special pairings will be available exclusively and for one weekend only at this event.

The chefs who’ll be firing up the grills include David Thomas, the man behind Baltimore’s Ida B’s Table, Anna Haugh, the Dublin born head chef behind Myrtle Restaurant in London, Malcolm Lee, head chef at Candlenut restaurant in Singapore, Gráinne O’Keefe, head chef at the Michelin bib gourmand-awarded Clanbrassil House just around the corner, Will Bowlby, head chef of London’s Kricket restaurant, and James Cochran, the head chef behind London’s 12:51. With more mega chefs still to be announced, our tummies are starting to rumble.

The chefs from home and away will come together with the Guinness brewers, confident in their differences, collaborative

in their approach. Local seasonal ingredients will take centre stage and feature in the signature dishes and beers unique to this festival weekend only. In true Meatopia style, all dishes will use the very best quality, ethically-sourced Irish meat grilled or smoked over sustainable wood and charcoal. There’ll be lots of great small batch beers on tap too. And for the many fans of the black stuff, there’ll be pints of Guinness Draught to accompany the oneoff dishes on the menu. Sounds yum.

As well as the chefs, there’ll be live talks on Meatopia’s Cutting Room Stage where connoisseurs from the worlds of beer, food and fire will share an insight into their passions. Chef Anna Haugh will discuss the rise of modern Irish cuisine and chef David Thomas will talk about the evolution of Soul Food. And as day turns into night there’ll also be a packed programme of live music and entertainment. See you on the dance floor.

GUINNESS X MEATOPIA will take place at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Dublin, on Friday July 5 from 6pm to 10pm, Saturday July 6 from 2pm to 10pm and Sunday July 7 from 1pm to 7pm.

Tickets starting at €59.50 are on sale now. The ticket price includes access to GUINNESS X MEATOPIA, experiencing the full programme of interactive talks and the line-up of live music acts, as well as five unique dishes paired with matched taster beers, plus a pint of choice from the beers available for the festival weekend only. Get them here before there gone: guinnessopengate.com/events.

Over 18s only.

Please enjoy Guinness responsibly.

For more information visit www.drinkaware.ie

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Holly Dalton Head Chef at Gertrude

“I’m so bored and tired of talking about Irish food and producers and sustainability.

Is that the only thing you have to say about your food?”

3fE has been having fun. There are now a mini family of 3fE sprogs around the city. New girl on the block Gertrude joins vintage kid Daniel and their older siblings Grand Canal Street and Sussex Terrace (weird names, but it’s 2019). With Gertrude, things have shifted from café to a more fully-restaurant-like vibe. Holly Dalton, who worked in Grand Canal Street, has the reins of the kitchen at Gertrude. Clearly Colin Harmon, the man behind 3fE, allows his employees the freedom to be creative: the food in Gertrude is unique in a playfully personal sense.

They started with the promise of an all-day menu, but while that has been shelved for now, there are different menus for different times of day. The aim is still to cater for more than just traditional appetites, and accessibility is key.

The set menu for dinner is two courses for €30. If that’s beyond your budget the breakfast, lunch and nibbles menus are more accessible. Gertrude’s snack game is strong: ear-pricking Cooleeny croquettes as well as dumpling queen Holly’s insanely good bacon and cabbage dumplings, plus a salami Scotch egg made with Irish sobrasada.

When we ate dinner, there were wild cards in addition to crowd pleasers.

An intense starter of lamb tartare with preserved lemons and a cured egg yolk, which is now off the menu, gave me a dopamine kick. There was a buttermilk chicken and waffles dish that came with addictive fermented hot sauce. The Korean Fried Chicken is also a winner.

The wine list has character and is finely hosted. For vegans, a humble carrot and tofu dish is elevated by the execution: miso glazed carrots, whipped tofu and pinhead granola. To finish we tried spiced sugar dusted apple fritters with custard; they were sublime. This is food that wants you to love it, with delightfully idiosyncratic reference points.

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I met Holly in a quiet Library Bar over a pint to talk about career paths, cooking and having the craic in the kitchen.

We are immediately distracted. Well, Holly is.

There’s a couple on a date, and they have started enthusiastically shifting. I can’t see but they are directly in her line of vision, “Ugh. Children are still awake”. Holly is frank, and funny. In fact the interview recording is probably about one-third me laughing.

Holly explains how a teenage interest in Japanese food fuelled her journey to professional kitchens: she experimented in her home kitchen with Japanese cookbooks from the Book Centre and ingredients her parents would buy for her. Food got her hooked: after school she joined the Culinary Arts programme in DIT (now Technical University Dublin).

Everyone on the course came from different food backgrounds. A practical exercise in first year got students to identify and locate food items around the city.

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where she was constantly berated for unsatisfactory work.

“I only cried once, when I was on my own in the kitchen,” she says. In another she didn’t eat for 48 hours. I put it to her, she must have known she was good at it, to keep going, to persevere?

“You don’t,” Holly admits. “You keep going because people in college are telling you push through, it’ll pay off. It was one of the darker periods in my life, for sure. But it definitely did pay off.”

Was the harshness of kitchens common?

“It was really common when I was training. I was surrounded by chefs so it was normalised, which is terrible, but it’s kind of a support as well.”

What pushes people through the shit parts of a chef career path are times when they get to explore what made them ”I was with Cúán Greene (now at Noma),” love food in the she remembers. “He did his work placement “I wanted to first place. In her in Marcus Wareing, and I didn’t know who play music and second year Holly the fuck Marcus Wareing was. He was like, that Japanese make ramen.” heard ‘He has two Michelin stars’. I didn’t know legends Yamamori what a Michelin star was. But then when we were opening Izakaya. Her teenage love for went to the Asian markets on Parnell Street, gyoza found expression: she got a job in the I was streets ahead of everyone else — ‘this is kitchen on her days off. a kumquat, or this is whatever’.”

“I couldn’t believe my luck. My entire job Her push for high-end was there from was just to make dumplings.” the start.

Her college placement in Stockholm in “In DIT if the lecturers saw potential in 3 Michelin Star restaurant Frantzen was you, they pushed you to do fine dining. also transformative.

And to be honest I agree.” But it’s not always easy. Holly's first experience in a top level “Frantzen was the opposite of a restaurant was a disaster. “That’s when the bubble being burst. My faith was restored bubble well and truly burst. That was a completely in hospitality. If I hadn’t done horrendous experience. It’s all fine now, that, I don’t know what I’d be doing now. but it was bad.”

It was fine dining, people paid hundreds of euros to eat there, yet we were messing She doesn’t counter the stereotype all the time.” of professional kitchens as volatile environments. She mentions one restaurant

In the end, it was a stint after college in Dublin’s Restaurant Forty One that gave Holly clarity on what she wanted — or didn’t want — from cooking. She is full of praise for Graham Neville, who was her then head chef.

“He is one of the best chefs in Ireland.

He taught me that as soon as you start cooking for other chefs and not customers, you might as well just close. You want to make people feel welcome,” nonetheless, the writing was on the wall. “I’d been in Restaurant Forty One for about two years, I was looking into the dining room and I didn’t really relate to anyone sitting there.

It was all suits. They were just there to spend money. I wanted to work in a restaurant with people I can relate to, with customers I can relate to.”

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There’s something direct about Holly, in a punkish kind of way, so I wasn’t surprised to learn she played bass in a punk band (Too Tame, they’re on Bandcamp). The formality of Restaurant Forty One just didn’t match her buzz.

“I wanted to play music and make ramen.

I couldn’t get any of my friends to go there.”

She found the home she was looking for in the much more casual café kitchen of 3fE. She learned the ropes of logistics and sustainability in Grand Canal Street.

The project to open Gertrude was ambitious and long-delayed, but the concept stayed with her.

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“The only brief Colin [Harmon] gave was we want to be as accessible as possible.

I knew I would love to own or go to a place like this.”

‘We’re all tired’ is the kitchen mantra of Holly and her sous chef Niamh Durkin. It’s a kind of ‘right lads, none of us wants to be here but let’s get on with things’ approach.

I asked her about Irish food and whether she feels any sense of culinary patriotism.

She criticises the banality of the whole conversation.

“Me and Niamh are like soulmates.

I’ve never worked with anyone that I’ve been so compatible with. She’s also really critical and not afraid to 'this isn't good enough'.She’ll never bullshit you.”

“I’m Irish so it’s Irish food. I’m so bored and tired of talking about Irish food and producers and sustainability. Is that the only thing you have to say about your food?

That’s like an entry level thing to talk about.

I want to talk about how I was on Munchies and they made this deep-fried pizza, or I was in Japan and had this pork sandwich in a newsagents, and I want to cook that.”

It’s a deliberately flippant comment; Gertrude work with the best Irish ingredients and make a point of not being a dick to producers or the planet. But it’s clear Gertrude’s menu is Holly's rather than tying in with other agendas.

“At the end of the day, not to be a wanker about it, the food I make is based on my experience and my identity as a chef and a human and travelling and what I eat and my lifestyle.”

This individuality shines through the food on offer. Holly points out that menus should be identifiable as created by individuals and gives Galway’s Jess Murphy as an example.

“If you handed me the menu from Kai, you’d know it was her.”

Holly has no time for elitism, “I hate that.

That’s why I love Jess, one minute she’s talking about turnips from down the road, the next minute she’s smoking a fag in PJ’s eating a chippy. She’s so real. That is something we don’t see enough of in Irish food. If I was organised, I’d be going to the farmers’ market all the time, and I do love that. But at the end of the day, we’re all tired.”

I end my consultation of the wisdom of Holly by asking her what she thinks of Dublin these days.

“I think Dublin is absolutely brilliant.

A lot of people have glorified cities like Copenhagen for food. I think it’s the most overrated food destination on the planet.

Dublin has any number of really high quality, excellent restaurants where you can go and spend thirty quid and eat well: Etto, Uno Mas, Bastible, Clanbrassil House, it has this fancy coffee shop, it’s the best thing ever. We need to stop looking so much at what London and New York is doing. You know how they say we’re five years behind London and 10 years behind New York? We need to break away from that.” @gertrudeireland

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Mex in the city The quest for authenticity Mexican food has deep roots and a wide reach. From tacos to tequila, enchiladas and burritos, it’s an incredibly well travelled cuisine, but with that mobility come confusion. Abrakebabra’s taco fries was one of Ireland’s first encounters with Mexico, even though fried potatoes with minced beef is a long way from a filled tortilla. Mexican food, or something by that name, entered into our food lexicon through the magic of globalisation. But how did these foodstuffs find us, and how do they relate to the real food of Mexico?

Mexican food origins are the ancient Mayan and other Mesoamerican food cultures of the Aztec empire, with European, African and Asian influences following the Spanish conquest. Lily Ramirez Foran who owns Mexican food shop Picado lists some globally integrated foods that are native to her country: corn, beans, squash, avocados, tomatoes, cacao, vanilla and the chili pepper. Europeans introduced beef and other meats, dairy and wheat.

The story of Mexican food globally is full of complexities. Hard shell tacos, overstuffed burritos and other wellknown ‘Mexican’ foods are not authentic.

Some foods under the Mexican umbrella are Tex-Mex (Mexican food cooked in Texas) and some are a product of the adoption, fusion and transformation of Mexican food by and for an American fast food audience.

The relationship between Tex-Mex and ‘authentic’ Mexican has at times been strained. As Robb Walsh, Texan food writer and historian puts it “Tex-Mex was a slur.

It was a euphemism for bastardised”.

It's always good to examine the

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disconnection of food from its origins but Robb argues that the Tex-Mex opposition is a false dichotomy. He sees Tex-Mex not as a derivative of Mexican food but as a US regional cuisine in its own right, sharing some of the same food origins with Mexican food with a culinary tradition in Texas since the Spanish missions.

Still, even if you see Tex-Mex as its own business, the relentless commodification and fast-food-ification of Mexican cuisine across the US is a bone of culturally appropriated contention. As food historian Jeffrey Pilcher puts it, “Mexican food has been carried around the world by North American capitalists – to the chagrin of Mexicans who find Tex-Mex wherever they travel”. Over the years there have been projects to collect and protect the real foods of Mexico. Lily says it’s her mission through her classes and blog to counter this confusion.

Across the Atlantic, Ireland has been a bit behind the curve on the global Mexican wave but we’re mad for Mexico these days.

Robb Walsh coined the phrase 'Eire-Mex' to mean “creative fusion dishes like tempura monkfish tacos with mango slaw & chilelime mayo at McHugh's Pub in Ennis.

Much of the credit goes to the Mexican food lovers who opened outlets like Picado Mexican Pantry in Dublin and the Blanco Niño tortilla factory in Clonmel.

The authentic Mexican ingredients these outlets provide give Irish chefs the opportunity to create new combinations”.

Here are some Dublin spots that focus on high quality and authentic Mexican food, as well as some welcome experimentation.

Picado Mexican Pantry South Richmond Street Lily’s shop is a warm and welcoming corner of Mexico in Dublin. The best way to find food ingredients from far away is through a shop that is managed by someone who understands and loves the hard-to-find produce that they sell. Picado is that shop. As well as the ingredients Lily also has a blog with an extensive collection of Mexican recipes, and hosts cookery classes in the same space. If you want an insight into authentic Mexican food then I suggest doing one of her workshops or supper clubs.

The shop is a treasure trove of products you would find it difficult to source elsewhere, lots of which Lily imports, like her tortillas. She sees food as a way of making connections with people, relaxing and enjoying company with food as the medium. She says she’s a bit of a purist in food terms; not always in her own cooking, but she feels an almost ambassadorial role in telling the story of authentic Mexican food. On that, she’s easygoing but emphatic on how Mexican food is distinct from Cali Mex or Tex Mex. She says tortillas for tacos should be corn based, and she sells masa harina (the corn flour you can use to make your own) including a blue corn version. She advises to heat them on a dry pan before filling. I was interested to learn about the Aztec diet, which had no meat and hardly any fat. In these pre-colonial

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times, people ate mostly vegetarian diets: the three sisters of squash, bean and corn.

Recommended in particular are her huge selection of dried and tinned chillies and her spicy and milder salsas (the Clement Jacques casera is delicious and they also sell salsa valentina). Mexican chocolate and vanilla pods are also dreamy. picadomexican.com 777 South Great George’s Street 777 is one of my favourite places in Dublin. It’s dark, sexy and loud, an escape into the underworld where the food is lush and the margaritas are mega. It can be a little pricey but they do great deals on Sundays as well as (music to my ears) Margarita Monday and Taco Tuesday.

Head chef Essa Fakhry has a degree in philosophy and brings an inquisitive mind to play in the kitchen. 777 have been looking to the States for inspirations and Essa did a few weeks staging at stylish New York Mexican joints Cosme and Empellon.

The emphasis here is on contemporary Mexican food with an Irish twist and in a European context and there are other influences too. Essa tells me he has a huge curiosity about the food of Mexico, especially the sophistication of its flavours and how different it is across the various regions. Try the oyster shots or the raw tuna, served with pickled cucumber and habanero chilli on a crispy tostada.

The tuna is a great textural counterpoint to the crunch.

The tacos are super, in particular the soft house blend chorizo which has the perfect level of spice, it catches with a little kick and a rich smokey flavour. The onions and sour cream add texture and coolness. Essa says he likes the lighter aromatic flavours of Mexica, so he’s particularly proud of the tomato salad, a bit like a Mexican caprese: a heirloom tomato, citrus aguachile verde, oregano. The fillings for the tacos and

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tostadas are inventive: there’s one with duck which has salsa matcha and peanut salsa, a little rich for me but sometimes you’re in the mood for that kind of thing. The elotes are fresh; smoky corn on the cob done Mexican street-style.

They have small plates and sharing platters and great stuff cooked on a wood fired grill. Their margaritas – frozen or not – are legendary and I want to drink them all the time. Try the mezcal if you like smoky, deeper flavours. If you like sweet stuff, the leche frita is a winner, a fried milk pudding, with caramel and vanilla ice cream 777.ie Masa Drury Street Masa has been hopping since now head chef Shane Gleeson it opened last year.

The tacos are top, the décor is pop and it's fun! Shane fell in love with Mexican food, and tacos in particular, while travelling in Mexico. When he came back he was frustrated with the options in Dubin. He says “the only tacos I could find are made with frozen tortillas. I felt the need to open a taqueria”.

The menu is not rigidly authentic, but he is strict on one thing: the tortillas, saying “we sourced a machine directly from Mexico to roll out tortillas all day long. It is the only one in Ireland”. The dishes are inspired by his trip and his time working in London’s Wahaca. Masa is nixtamalized corn dough, the basis of the tortilla that make the taco.

Shane says the beef Carne Asada and the salsas are very close to Mexican recipes, but of course there’s also adaption to Irish tastes. I loved the fried chicken taco, richly succulent and comes with salsa macha, chipotle. The pork Al Pastor comes with pineapple and onion is a very tasty bite.

Shane says, “the most popular taco in Mexico is the tacos al pastor. We marinade pork over night in a mix of chillies and spices before its cooked on a vertical spit.

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I'd recommend trying this above anything else”. The fried fish taco is lovely and light and there’s a mushroom one for “Tex-Mex was vegans. An updated a slur. It was a menu will also euphemism for feature beans (Robb Walsh will be happy), bastardised” more quesadilla and — Robb Walsh vegan options. I am extremely excited that they plan to sell frozen margaritas.

Shane seemed on board with my offer to help with the testing. The churrosand baby doughnuts, are incredibly edible and liplicklingy good. masadublin.com El Grito Mountjoy Square East El Grito caused consternation recently with its announcement it was closing down.

But panic over, it’s actually just moved to Mountjoy Square. The new space is much bigger, with proper tables and seats (The Temple Bar spot was really grab-and-go).

It’s a nifty little taqueria, owned by a Mexican-Polish couple, serving some of the best authentically Mexican street-style food in the city. They felt the burrito was getting too much attention, so while burritos are on the menu, there are lots of other options.

They get their tortillas from Clonmel based Blanco Niño, which are the real deal.

On first read the menu is not dissimilar to regular burrito joints, but the meat, vegetable and cheese fillings fillings are more deep and meaningful and can be used to fill any of the receptacles. Try the quesadilla, a more manageable alternative to the burrito. The gringa comes with melted cheese, which in my book, adds value to any situation. Beef barbacoa or the Mexican chorizo both offer intense flavourful meaty experiences. Their tacos are also the real deal and a lighter alternative to the hegemony of the burrito. Tacos de chicharron are crispy pork belly inside

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a taco with crunchy salad. The torta are Mexican sandwiches. Salsas are vibrant and spicy, and they also sell traditional Mexican drinks like the sweet rice water and vanilla cinnamon agua de horchata. Lest we forget the sublime guacamole.

Xico Baggot Street Perhaps best known for being a party venue, this place prides itself on not just being a watering hole with a Mexican theme.

Walking down the stairs into the cavern space you leave the swarm of grey suits of Baggot Street behind and step into a different world.

While the margaritas flow, there’s still a sharp focus on food. As head chef Peter Wolohan puts it, they’re a party bar and they know they’re not fine dining, but they want to “stir up the imagination”.

“I want our food to be food where you can sit down and have a drink. What I love is when people get the food and they’re like, ‘Wow, I wasn’t expecting that’. I love surprising people like that…” xico.ie

“Mexican food has the world by North – to the chagrin of Tex-Mex wherever

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been carried around American capitalists Mexicans who find they travel” — Jeffrey Pilcher

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Sweet dreams are made of cheese An ancient Irish culture Do you have a sweet tooth or a savoury one? Mine is very much on the savoury side. Cheese is my chocolate, the ultimate comfort food. Some people claim that the same addictive reward processes activated by chocolate are activated by cheese.

Like how sugar releases a hit of dopamine, proteins in cheese (casomorphins) apparently have an opioid-like effect on our neural pathways.

Can I use this an excuse for my excessive cheese consumption?

Ireland doesn’t have strong history of cheesemaking. Well, it did according to food historians until the seventeenth century when for various reasons the skill died out. It’s only in the last 30 years or so that we have embraced farmhouse and naturally made, hand-crafted cheeses. Many generations of Irish people grew up thinking there was only one type of cheese, and it was orange. But now we are mad for the stuff, and while we still cherish cheddar our cheese repertoire has expanded.

Good cheese is flavoursome, rich and satisfying in a way that few foods are.

You can overdo it, true, but for me it’s is a kind of magical product. There’s an alchemy in the turning of dairy into cheese.

Like honey, it manifests the characteristics of the landscape and environment around it, distilling its organic context into a flavour sensation. The scale of Irish food chains means there’s a very direct and visible path from land to sandwich.

While Irish fromage was once Calvita, Easi-Singles and generic Trump-coloured cheddar, what you might call the gateway drugs of the cheese world, we are now blessed with a bounteous assortment of cheeses, with a rake of great cheesedealers, I mean, mongers, selling class A dairy.

Fallon and Byrne do great cheese. As do Morton’s in Ranelagh. Donnybrook Fair have lots of fancy options, but I can’t go in there because of my blood pressure and the price of everything. Loose Canon Cheese & Wine is the new kid in town having just opened on Drury Street It’s run by the Meet Me in the Morning peeps, so you can bet on an epic selection of (mostly) Irish produce and natural wines.

Corleggy Cheese are the go-to Temple Bar market

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cheesemongers these days, selling their raw cow and goats milk creations and a selection of others, but before Corleggy, Sheridan’s was the spot. Their regular stall at the market they helped set up was always a favourite feature. Born in Galway they’ve now grown to have shops around the country including their wondrous chilled cheese cave on South Anne Street.

I met with John Leverrier, manager at the Dublin 2 location. Sheridans’ shop is an Aladdin’s cave of blue cheese, goat’s cheese, washed rind, brie and hard and soft cheese of all varieties. They also sell a small selection of the ultimate cheese partner, wine, plus amazing Le Levain bread, cured meats and essential cheese paraphernalia such as crackers and chutney.

John says Irish cheese is more exciting than it was 30, even 20, years ago, although they sell cheese from all over Europe. The number of cheese producers in Ireland has risen from around 10 in the late 70s to over 60 now, with practically every county represented.

Cheddar features here, they have five carefully chosen flavours, but it’s certainly not the only show in town. John tells me that despite its apparent banality, cheddar is one of the most difficult cheeses to produce well. The most popular cheese in their shop is the nutty, toothsome Comté, a semi-hard, unpasteurised cow’s cheese from the Jura mountains in France.

Coolea is another hot tip from the Sheridan’s manager, a gouda style hard cheese made on the Cork/Kerry border.

He also says Irish blue cheeses rank up there with the famous Frenchie ones.

Another Cork treasure, the Gubeen farm cheeses from the Ferguson family, are of legendary status. Try the oak smoked version if you like a smokey, hard cheese.

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"Many generations of Irish people grew up thinking there was only one type of cheese, and it was orange."

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Continental-wise, Sheridan’s do a Parmesan from Giorgio Cravero, a ‘cheese banker’, who sources consistently good parmesan from Emilia-Romagna. Parmesan is probably the most useful cheese to have in your fridge; it lasts a long time and can add a serious umami-bomb to pasta dishes.

Try Cacio e Pepe, with spaghetti or ramen, David Chang style. If you love the springy stretchiness of melted mozzarella but find it a bit bland, John recommends Italian Asiago which has similar textural qualities but a bit more of a savoury bite.

I tasted a few cheeses which were new to me that day. One was Mimolette, a pretty, pumpkin-hued hard French cheese with a sweet and buttery flavour. Erik, a cheesemonger in the shop, gave me a sliver of his favourite; PoulignySaint-Pierre is a triangular-shaped, soft, rich and crumbly cheese with a wrinkly rind.

It is yummy. They also do a seriously goaty, Gouda.

Most of these cheeses are reliant on variable factors like what the dairy herds can eat, the weather during production and the moisture content and temperature of the storage environment. Many things can affect how cheeses taste.

John agrees that the shop must work closely with producers to manage the natural mutability of the products they sell.

I also learned that the cheese industry, despite being founded 8000 BCE, has not escaped automation. Swiss cheesemakers, never short of a bob or two, use robots to rotate their wheels of gruyere on the regular. You won’t find any cheese robots in West Cork just yet, but it’s surely coming down the line. Hello, Cheesoid! sheridanscheesemongers.com

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Delicioso Brazilian food in Dublin In some ways, Brazil and Ireland couldn’t be more different; tropical versus permanently cold and wet, sexy samba versus awkward jigs and reels and beach buzzing in bikinis versus summer in Tramore under an umbrella. But when it comes to food, Brazilian and Irish tastes are well-matched. Brazilian food is hearty, starchy and flavoursome. It makes the perfect comfort food.

Brazilians are one of the largest immigrant groups in Ireland, 15,798 in the 2016 census. Many Brazilian in Dublin hail from Rio de Janeiro, the capital. It is a huge country, with a long history of migration so there’s a deep cultural mix contributing to what makes up ‘Brazilian food’; indigenous Amerindian, Portuguese (they colonised Brazil in the 1500’s), African (via the slave trade), other European like Spanish, Italian, and more recently Japanese (Brazilian sushi is a big thing).

Meat, and beef in particular, is important.

Brazilian barbecue, churrasca, is hugely popular, and while places here use Irish beef, they take Brazilian cuts like picanha, a tender rump cap slice which is rich and tender, marbled with fat. Cassava, also known as manioc or mandioca, a tubular white vegetable with a fibrous brown exterior, is to Brazil what potato is to Ireland.

I’m all over the salgadinhos: salty, often deep-fried snacks that are popular as street food in Brazil. For instance, empanada-like pasteis are crispy-flaky pastry envelopes with a variety of meat and cheese based fillings, coxinha are tapioca cases filled with minced chicken, and you also have baked cheese rolls, pão de queijo. I never thought I'd say this, but ham and cheese pasteis might give jambons a run for their money.

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Here are a few spots to get your munch on, Brazilian style.

Wigwam, Middle Abbey Street.

Totally in keeping with Brazil’s history of mixing cultures, the Brazilian chef Pedro Ferraz at Wigwam came to head the Brazilian kitchen there via Italy and Ireland.

He worked at a high-end restaurant in Italy where he discovered a passion for food.

The menu at Wigwam combines Brazilian recipes, Irish ingredients, Italian flair and street food vibes. The food here is generous and hearty, perfect for sharing. The bites section is great: giant cassava chips are my new favourite thing and the tapioca squares with smoked bacon and guava jam are unreal.

Pedro experiments with alcohol in his cooking; we had a deep Brewtonic barbecue sauce made with porter.

The legendary pichanha cut of steak — a fatty, easy to yield piece of meat — was cooked to order (meltingly rare for us) and perfectly seasoned. An IrishBrazilian dream team. The Escondidinho hearty bowl is like a shepherd’s pie with mashed cassava on top. They do a wild mushroom vegan bowl and lots of other vegan options including a wicked jackfruit burger. The national spirit of Brazil is the clear, sugar-cane banger, cachaça, which you can sample here in the famous, simplebut-effective caipirinha: a killer cocktail made with cachaça, sugar, and lime. Close your eyes and pretend that noise outside is the Copacabana traffic and not the red line.

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Café Mineiro, Crown Alley.

Temple Bar is a space of such caricatured Irishness there’s something incongruous about stepping inside the doors of Café Mineiro on Crown Alley.

At lunchtime on a Saturday at least, it feels like entering a bustling greasy spoon in South America. It is buzzy and informal with Brazilian pop playing in the background and lots of friendly staff racing around bringing plates of simple, hot, tasty food. The clientele here come from everywhere, but there are lots of Brazilians, some with their Irish partners, patiently explaining the menu and offering recommendations.

This is not a fancy spot, but the food is super and the portions are big. They always have a dish of the day, and at the weekend this is often feijoada, the Brazilian national dish of black beans, pork, served in the traditional way with orange slices and rice.

They also have vaca atolada (ribs stew), a typical dish from Minas Gerais. There are pasteis of all sorts (which I learned may have evolved from Japanese immigrants bringing Chinese fried wontons to Brazil), the ubiquitous coxhina, and lots of meat (picanha, chicken parmigiana, beef and chicken stroganoff), served with rice, beans, crunchy cassava farofa and fresh, fresh salads. There are gigantic, sticky, intimidatingly sweet cakes. It’s open late most evenings and is the place to try traditional, straightforward Brazilian home cooking. If you’re passing through Temple Bar some day and want to escape a grey Irish day, Café Mineiro is a portal into another continent. @cafemineirodublin

wigwamdublin.com

Real Brasil, Capel Street.

There are a few Brazilian shops dotted around the city, but this one was recommended to me by Pedro from Wigwam. On entering, you’re immediately greeted by three tall fridges stocked with all kinds of meat, Irish beef mostly, but butchered in Brazilian styles.

Brazil natives Isabela and Nayara behind the counter told me that many Brazilians come here at the weekend to buy beef for churrasca; the famous picanha cut and ribs are both hot sellers. You can get your beans here for feijoada too, if you want to attempt to make it yourself. They stock essential items for the Brazilian pantry and treats that Brazilians miss from home, plus ready to eat hot snacks like coxinha and pão de queijo. You’ll find the versatile cassava in its multiple manifestation; tapioca of different kinds, the finer polvilho, and ready-mix farofa — crunchy flakes, a little like a Brazilian panko. They sell Brazilian style cuscuz, not Moroccan wheat style but instead made from corn. Their fruit confectionary, paste like sweets that reveal the complex colonial origins of many Brazilian food items, include goiabada which was the Portuguese colonisers’ attempt to recreate quince jelly using the local fruit guava. In Brazil this sweet conserve is eaten with a regional cheese called queijo minas and together the combination is called Romeo and Juliet — a version is on the dessert menu in Wigwam. They also sell açaí berries if you want to try your own açaí bowl.

Sabor Nordestino, Moore St Mall.

I’m told the streets around Capel Street are known as ‘Little Rio’ given the many Brazilian bakeries, shops and restaurants around. Up the road in Moore Street Mall is Sabor Nordestino, and underground hub for hungry Brazilians. They are open during the day and were buzzing when I was in. Sabor Nordestino would be a lifesaver if you found yourself in Dublin 1 with a hangover as they do a roaring trade in the salty snack department; fried, delicate pastries with a variety of fillings and the conical coxinha which goes down well with a fizzy guarana energy pop.

The food is simple but fresh and well made. They have feijoada and also carne de panela (beef stew), rabada com agrião (oxtail stew) and moqueca (fish stew).

They have frango a Milanesa (breaded chicken fillet) and a version with cheese and tomato sauce. And the cakes…

Brazilians have sweet tastes, and both here and in Café Mineiro the cakes are gigantic, luscious, sticky concoctions — oozing caramel and nuts and sugar. Try the brigadeiro, traditional cocoa and condensed milk chocolate-flavoured balls, or the pudim, shiny, gelatinous, yellow desserts made with condensed milk and a caramel sauce.

@sabornordestinodublin

realbrasilfoods.com

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Na Séasúir

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Na Séasúir Mincing words Isobel Farrelly and Michelle Wickham are the two chefs – or possibly cooks, we’ll get to that in a bit – who staged an unusual offal-based pop up called Na Séasúir (the seasons) in Forest Avenue on a Monday in April. Being from Offaly and a lover of puns I thought the verbal shenanigans would be rolling off my tongue, but I just didn’t have the heart for it, in the (tail) end.

My attempts were all tripe.

Unlike my puns however, the pop up was a success. Two seatings, at 6.30pm and 9.15pm, and the unexpected arrival of an additional 15 guests due to a booking mix-up, gave the two chefs a challenging service.

We didn’t have a written menu but each dish was explained by servers Renata and Todd, who gave the impression they had worked at Forest Avenue for years. We sat down to start with some seeded bread served with a creamy umami, a three-year home-fermented miso butter made from smoked sea salt. Normal butter, you’re dead to me.

The pre-starter was a deeply rich dark brown oxtail and chervil broth flecked with a vivid green wild garlic oil, and a single soft, wet and gratifyingly dense suet dumpling. The starter was white pudding with venison spiced crackling, an in-house tangy brown sauce and a white cabbage remoulade. We loved the snack of deepfried crispy pigs’ ears, which were much softer than the scratching-like bites I expected. They came with wild garlic and rosemary salt and a spiced togarashi mayo.

Main course was an almost gamey vadouvan spiced goat shoulder from Broughgammon Farm, with a perfectly soft goat heart and liver sausage, smoked goats curd, turnip cannoli, and dandelion

and watercress salad leaves. The dessert was a wafery crisp cep custard tart, offset by soured raisins and a poitín parfait.

To end, a perfectly zingy rosemary and rhubarb macaron. The flavours overall were hearty and end of winter-y: meaty, complex and deep.

than her pop up partener. “Isobel is more of a fine dining kind of chef. I have a little bit experience but it’s not my passion. I just go in with things. If I never made myself out to be anything more than a cook really”.

Isobel and Michelle have been working together for the past year and a half.

Although they both went to DIT at the same time, on different courses, their path didn’t properly cross until 2017. Michelle accuses Isobel of Instagram-stalking her, “she kept liking all my posts”. Isobel protests that there were approaches from Michelle’s side too. We finally agree that it was a two-way stalk. After chatting online they had their first date in Etto.

They both share this down to earth approach to food, but it manifests in different ways. Isobel is more into the finedining side of cooking, with the emphasis on craft, precision and discipline.

Their cooking histories are very different.

Michelle has just left Two Pups, a casually trendy coffee and grub spot on Francis Street, and before that she was in Rathgar’s Fia. Isobel is a sous chef in Forest & Marcy, the more casual but still high-level sister restaurant to John and Sandy Wyer’s Forest Avenue. She saw herself more as a baker until an eye-opening placement in Chapter One. She said she was clueless about cooking at that level which in ways was an advantage.

Isobel also worked for Neven Maguire, who she says really is as nice as he seems.

She’s mad about her experience in Forest and Marcy, a spot that always comes up when I ask Dublin based chefs where they like to eat. She says working with head chef Ciaran Sweeney is a dream.

“Without a doubt, he’s one of the best chefs I’ve ever worked with. He has a way with flavours like no other chef I’ve worked with. He’s improved my palate and I’m only there eight months”.

Michelle was head chef in Farmhill in Goatstown for while so she also has plenty of experience but generally more casual

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“Sure so am I,” says Isobel.

She says, “I like the structure, the organisation. Even just having to get things done at a certain time”.

Michelle says, “I wouldn’t have the discipline to be doing what Isobel does.

I just don’t take it as seriously. I cook because I enjoy it. If I started to take it that seriously and got stressed out about it, I wouldn’t enjoy it. I wouldn’t be able to do it”. The pressure of a high-end kitchen is on another level, “I’m too craic-oriented.”

Saying that, Michelle clearly likes the creative side of cooking. The concept for the pop up was her's.

“I’m good with the ideas, Isobel is good at executing things”.

Michelle’s cousin Sonia Wickham did the haunting artwork for the event, and she hopes to get kept on board for future functions.

Both Isobel and Michelle had grannies who fostered a love of food, including offal.

Michelle says, “we based it [the pop up] on stuff that people don’t really eat anymore.

We love eating that kind of food, and you just don’t find that kind of food on menus in Dublin anymore”. Fergus Henderson’s nose to tail eating is an obvious reference point. Isobel says they read Henderson’s books as inspiration and went to his London restaurant, St John’s.

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“We wanted to cook stuff you don’t see anymore,” Isobel tells me. “Like the white pudding, you see plenty of black pudding.

White pudding it’s gorgeous.”

"We wanted to cook stuff you don't see any more"

Michelle agrees, “With the brown sauce, it’s very Irish. Other things we made were nostalgic, like the suet dumpling and oxtail broth.”

But she says mostly “it was about trying to get as much flavour into things as possible”.

They were planning and preparing for weeks, searching for ingredients like the goat’s hearts from Broughgammon farm and the dandelion flowers from Dave Heffernan.

Some of the preparations took days, like the bone broth and some of the sauces.

The pigs’ ears were slow cooked overnight, sous vide style. Despite the preparation it was the first time either of the chefs had taken on something like this. Michelle said it was “the first time I ever saw Isobel stressed.

We weren’t stressed when people were there, it was fine. Just the hour before… it was like oh god, oh god”.

Michelle and Isobel are both a bit despondent about Dublin at the moment.

Michelle sees a bit of a shift in terms of opportunities for setting up businesses, “during the recession that’s when all the little independent places started popping up and now they’re just getting pushed out.

There are cranes everywhere. It makes me feel overwhelmed. It’s taking the poverty and putting it under a carpet.”

Isobel compares Dublin to her two-anda-half year stint cooking in San Francisco.

She saw the tech-driven transformation of the city as it served the workers of Silicon Valley. Rents became unaffordable, “all the chefs were leaving. Before that it had lots of hippies, an artists community. Nine or ten years ago it was affordable.

That all changed”.

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Dublin’s globalised tech-hub status has an effect on our food culture, in good and bad ways. As a small country we’re also very susceptible to importing consumer fads.

Michelle doesn’t mince her words when it comes to one obvious example: brunch.

“I hate it. It’s all the same, it’s all a replica.

I just want normal food. Like that place Canal Bank Café down on Leeson St. It’s just normal bread, not sourdough, and they do omelettes. It’s lovely”.

Unsurprisingly they are resolutely against affectation, preferring simple quality over badly done sophistication. Take that bread we all love, sourdough. Isobel says “the majority of sourdough you get in Dublin is not great”. Michelle is more blunt, “it’s shite”.

We get Michelle to admit that people like brunch however, she adds, “I’m just not interested in cooking it anymore. There’s only so many eggs you can fry before you start to crack up”. Finally, a decent pun.

We talk about how spoilt we are with amazing natural products in Ireland, such as dairy. Isobel agrees “we are spoilt with our dairy, I don’t think we realise how good it is”. Then we get on to every chef’s bugbear: insincere food intolerances.

Both of them have seen a huge spike in people not eating certain foods in recent years.

“Everybody has something these days,” remarks Isobel. “I can’t get over it.

There’s too much information. People are self-diagnosing themselves”. Michell is even more direct, “people just have issues, and they project it through food”.

They have sympathy for coeliacs and those with genuine allergy and intolerance sufferers but see some customers causing a lot of extra work for kitchens with no real medical reason. Michelle says, “you go to the trouble of making a new menu for a coeliac and then you see them drinking pints”. “Or someone with a lactose

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allergy, scoffing away on the butter,” adds Isobel, “after us preparing sauces without any butter…”. She finds it curious that the weekday customers rarely have any food issues, “it’s much more noticeable in the restaurant at weekends. During the week its fine, the people who come out during the week just want to enjoy a good meal”. Michelle thinks you can even draw distinctions based on postcodes, “when I worked in Fia in Dublin 6, I swear to God everyone had something wrong with them.

I was like you shouldn’t even be eating out, you should be at home wrapped up in cotton wool. But down on Francis Street, in Two Pups, we hardly ever get an allergy… and if someone did have an allergy nobody ever made a big deal about it”.

Regardless of allergy-ridden customers Michelle and Isobel are looking forward to the next iteration of Na Séasúir.

Michelle thinks they might host it on the coast, in Cullenstown in Wicklow where she’s from. Isobel’s hours are bit more intense so I get the sense she’d be happy to wait a little while, but August is a possibility. Again the focus would be on less-commonly eaten food, this time from the sea. Michelle says, “I’d like to do some seafood that’s not very normally used.

We have oysters, cockles, beautiful seafood, it’s a foragers paradise. I’d just do five small plates, a surprise menu”.

Wexford strawberries would make an appearance, as they’re in season in the summer. Sustainability would be key.

Michelle finishes, “There’s a cockle strand I’d just go down with a spade and a bucket and I’d dig them up, on Blackhall strand.

I could get seaweed, sea lettuce. It’d all be sustainable. We could go down to the oyster farmer and get some oysters, go down to Hook head and get some potatoes, cook them in seaweed. There’s just so much good shit there that’s not being utilised down there at all”. @seasuir

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EAT IT LIKE A LOCAL

Lilliput Stores Stoneybatter

The lovely Lilliput Stores is a greengrocer, deli and coffee shop, supplying Stoneybatter with speciality products from Europe and Ireland since 2007. It is owned by Brendan O’Mahony, who has long been involved in farmer’s markets and the food trade so has great connections to a myriad of artisanal producers of delicious things. Recently they’ve started doing dinner evenings on Thursday and Friday nights, in the shop and their wonderfully bright space at the back.

Plans are afoot to open on Saturday. I spoke to Aoife Cronin, the manager, who referes to the new food offering as 'aperitivo evenings'.

The idea is to change the focus every month or so and try out new ideas.

There’s a focus on spritz and small plates; cicchetti style dishes well as wellchosen wines to match. The evening menu has started in earnest since chef Katie Quinn came on board and now she has a companion in the kitchen, Zia Burke. Katie used to work at the Fumbally and you can see the same emphasis on seasonal, flavoursome dishes with vegetable and ferments taking centre stage. Italy is a strong reference point for the style of dining, but they’re working with the idea of ‘seasons’. Not just in terms of yearly seasons but in the sense of taking on food themes for a few weeks at a time. For instance,

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when we were there it was Japanese season, inspired by Katie’s recent trip to Japan.

We shared a whole host of beautiful dishes; cabbage with salty rich miso, cockles in a shimeji and shiitake mushroom dashi broth, vivid pink pickles from McNally farm, pork and ginger gyoza, a sublime kohlrabi, apple and fennel dish, and West Cork asparagus. The idea is to change the focus every month or so and try out new ideas. It’s a beautiful space, refurbished after a fire a few years ago, and the stylish posters for the evenings are designed by Katie’s boyfriend John Lambert. Lilliput’s relationships to a community of suppliers and producers guarantees the food here has been chosen with discernment.

So although the menu is short, you can trust that the food will be delicious as well as a little bit different. @lilliput_evenings

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CHEF IN FOCUS

Stephen Gibson Café en Seine & Pichet When Stephen Gibson picked up ‘White Heat’ by Marco Pierre White when he was 16, that was it. He was inspired. It reframed the way he looked at food and kickstarted a career that has led him to work all over the world, and eventually back in Dublin where he now works as Executive Chef in the recently refurbished Café en Seine as well as co-owning Pichet on Trinity Street.

Over the years, through his work in Pichet, he’s been offered opportunities to be involved in various roles and projects, but nothing quite felt right. It was the sheer size of Café en Seine that drew him in, as he puts it, “I believed it was possible to make such an ambitious project a food destination”.

Stephen is this month’s ‘Chef in Focus’ and we met upstairs in Café en Seine, which feels like it’s been taken straight out of a trendy backstreet of Paris more than ever, to discuss balancing working in such a hectic field,, plus his advice on longevity in the volatile restaurant industry.

It’ll be 10 years in July since you opened Pichet, what do you feel you instilled in that place to give it such longevity?

You don’t take anything for granted.

Once you get busy you don’t just sit back, dossing. You have to keep plugging at it and try to keep it fresh and real. There’s so much competition now, for us every Friday and Saturday night you’re guaranteed to be full, but the rest of the week is a fight to fill your business, there’s so much choice.

Even though I work from here [Café en Seine], every single day I’m over in Pichet.

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With juggling different projects, how do you find stepping away and trusting your team and collaborators?

Since this place opened this is the first time I’ve had to do that. I’m lucky enough that the guy who’s left responsible in Pichet has been with me for three years, so he cooks the way I cook, so you’re not taking a chance.

So the Michelin Bib Gourmand was awarded to Pichet, while that must have rubber stamped things for you, how do you approach the awards end of things when it comes to your restaurants?

I always say, I'd rather be unknown and busy than be this famous restaurant that’s struggling. The thing about awards is, especially in Ireland, you go through a few years when you win, win, win, then someone else comes along. You can be too popular in media, then just disappear. When we opened Pichet it was our goal to get a Michelin Bib Gourmand, that’s what we wanted, and we got it in the first year…

I suppose it’s about not letting a goal like that become the whole reason for existing?

Yeah, and the awards thing in Ireland is funny, because there are so many amazing restaurants that don’t even get shortlisted.

If you get too consumed with it you’ll start going crazy.

You were in L’Ecrivain for seven years, how do you feel that shaped you as a chef in comparison to a project like Pichet?

In L’Ecrivain I was the head chef in a kitchen that had a Michelin star, so you had to give so much every day to keep that paranoia of losing your star away. In L’Ecrivain we had 18 chefs in the kitchen, so it was a big team, but it was just cook, cook, cook, and manage that large team, whereas with Pichet we signed the personal guarantee on the lease so there’s that sort of pressure!

Like, ‘Shit, if this doesn’t work I’m liable for a 17-year lease!’, you know? When it’s your own, you also have the responsibility of making

sure everyone gets paid, and all that, so that matures you faster. I left college when was 19 and I went abroad for 12 years, so L’Ecrivain was the first job I came back to in Dublin. So I was kind of late going into the sous chef, head chef role, but L’Ecrivain was the first place I was able to have total control over showcasing all of the knowledge I had picked up over the years.

And was it always your ambition to open a restaurant yourself?

Yeah, I’d say 90 per cent of chefs want to do that.

Is that about chefs wanting to put their stamp on things?

Yeah definitely, I spent maybe two years looking for a premises before we opened. We were looking, looking, looking…

Then the property crash happened the year we opened. I had found a premises, and it had taken me so long to get to that point, that I just didn’t want to give up so we said, ‘Fuck it, let’s go for it and see what happens’.

That stood to us in a way, during the big crash everyone was watching their money and we were a new restaurant that could pitch itself wherever we wanted. So we went in quite accessible, not too expensive and that stood to us.

How did you persevere at such a tough time? How did you keep confidence up?

I was too busy working! No joking!

You’re doing 90 hours a week and you’re so exhausted, it’s just a blur. Without that recession we would have never have been able to find that premises, we would have never have been able to afford a place like that, it gave us a start.

chance and do my own thing, and if you fail there might be a bit of ‘I told you so’ from some people, but if you work hard, chances are you will succeed. If you open a business then two months down the line you’re taking it easy and you’re not focused and you’re not in there every day, then stuff starts to slip.

In an interview a good while back with yourself you were talking about the worst aspects of being a chef and you mentioned that when the customers leave, you’re still there, preparing for the next service. I thought that was interesting, because you seem to have quite a balanced life with exercise, family and work… Did you find it hard to strike that balance?

If you look at the social life of chefs, in your early 20’s chefs party like mad, but work so hard. Whereas I’ve noticed with all of the chefs my age, they’re all gymming it, cycling, or some form of fitness, and I think that’s a natural progression, because you’ve done all your partying in your 20’s! Cheffing is such a physically demanding job, you need to be healthy, I’m 44 now and I’m probably healthier now than I was in my 20’s! But to build up the routine is the hard part, making going to the gym part of your schedule, almost like a job, plan it into your day.

Now it’s just work, family, exercise, work, family, exercise… That’s my gig now and it’s good, I can’t complain! cafeenseine.ie pichet.ie

It’s such a leap to go out on your own, in any industry, but especially in the food and creative industries. What advice would you give for anyone battling with doubt, imposter syndrome or any stumbling blocks at the beginning of their careers?

You’ve got to believe in yourself. I definitely had those worries. I left L’Ecrivain to take a

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"You don’t take anything for granted. Once you get busy you don’t just sit back, dossing."

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Meet the Instagram page rating Dublin pints @Guinness Advisor Over Paddy’s weekend I was trying to explain to my cousin visiting from Boston the intricacies of the black stuff, how not every Guinness is created equal. He’s a big fan of the Irish beverage, but rarely orders it Stateside, for obvious reasons. So when he’s visiting family here even a bang average pint makes his toes curl with delight.

Any local fan of Guinness will know that there are places in Dublin city that are better than others, and some places to avoid completely. Recently an Instagram page emerged that has been the subject of much controversy within the stout world.

Guinness Advisor has amassed more than 16,000 followers over the last few months as the mysterious account began posting reviews and ratings of pints in various boozers around the capital “First and foremost the page started out of my love for a great pint of Guinness and how it’s not always a guarantee that you’ll get one,” the person behind Guinness Advisor, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells us. “There are pubs out there that don’t get the recognition they deserve for serving great Guinness while some others might get too much.”

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We asked Guinness Advisor to give us the answers to their most frequently asked questions, to help you on your journey to find the perfect pint.

“Beware of pubs with more than three taps at one bar. If it doesn’t come out of tap one or two in these places, it’s more than likely going to be a very poor pint.”

“People who use the word ‘Creamers’ are more likely to prefer the taste of Heineken, they just don’t know it yet.”

“I’ve found that in a number of pubs the pint can actually suffer when it’s too busy.

Quiet midweek pints have consistently come out on top.”

“Cash is king — so far the only pubs to achieve a 9/10 do not accept card.”

“The current best scoring area in Dublin is Dublin 9 with an average of 7.3. With a long way still to go, Northside (average 6.87) pints are ahead of those on the Southside (6.45).”

“The glass doesn’t actually affect the taste; it’s just more of a personal preference.”

Guinness Advisor’s top-rated pints: John Kavanagh, ‘The Gravediggers’ — 9/10 Tom Kennedy’s, The Liberties — 9/10 Lotts, Lower Liffey Street — 8/10 J O'Connell, South Richmond Street — 8/10 Kings Inn, Henrietta Street — 8/10

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SEASONAL RECIPE

Spicy Carrot

by Cliona Brennan of Sanctuary Escape To make the carrot What you need 4 large carrots, peeled & roughly chopped 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 3 tbsp tahini 1 tsp mixed spice 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper Sea salt & black pepper What to do Steam or boil your carrots until soft enough that they can be pierced with a table knife.

Drain and return to the pan.

Allow to cool slightly.

Add the olive oil, tahini, mixed spice and cayenne pepper to your carrots and blitz until smooth using a hand held stick blender. Season to taste and blitz again.

If you don’t have a stick blender you can use a food processor of blender too.

To make the aubergine & pepper What you need 2 tbsp olive oil 1 aubergine, sliced 2 red peppers sliced length ways 6 spring onions roughly chopped 3 clove of garlic 1 tsp fennel seeds 1 tsp caraway seeds 1/2 tsp chilli flakes 1 tin chopped tomatoes 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp sugar 1/2 small bunch of coriander 1 tsp sumac 2 tsp sesame seeds Optional extra add-ins: olives, capers.

What to do Char-grill the peppers and aubergines on a griddle pan (high heat) for approximately 15 minutes turning frequently until nice and charred on both sides. Set aside and when they are cool chop quite finely.

Finely slice your garlic and spring onion.

Add to the pan with the chilli flakes and caraway and fennel seeds. Once these have cooked for a couple of minutes and are fragrant add the chopped tomatoes, along with the cumin, coriander, paprika, sugar and seasoning. Turn the heat down a little bit and cook for around ten minutes until the sauce has cooked together.

Add in the roast peppers and aubergine, stir to combine and simmer of a couple of minutes.

Top with fresh coriander. @sanctuaryescape

Easily digestible.

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