Festival offers food for thought

Foodies braved the threat of bad weather to sample what Dublin’s best restaurants are offering at the Taste of Dublin festival, writes Niamh Mullen.
Food heaven is the best way to describe the Taste of Dublin festival. Now in its fourth year, the festival took place from Thursday, June 11 to Sunday, June 14 — a weekend when the weather held up and it was ‘the place to be seen’, according to a friend in the know.

Twenty high-end Dublin restaurants took a tent at the Iveagh Gardens, including Roly’s Bistro, L’Ecrivain, Chapter One, The Saddleroom at the Shelbourne Hotel, Ely, Saba and King Sitric, to name a few.
h4. Special menu
The way it works is the public pays an entrance fee of E28.50 and then exchanges euros for ‘florins’ to buy samples at the tents. Each restaurant had a special ‘Taste Menu’ of starters, main courses and desserts, all priced between five and seven ‘florins’.
L’Ecrivain had the longest queue all weekend and its lamb burger (more full-size than taster) was one of the food highlights of the festival. Ely’s organic beef burger, steak frites with bearnaise sauce from The Saddle Room, Bang Café’s roast king scallops with potato puree and bacon oil, and the Valrhona hot chocolate pudding with vanilla-bean ice cream from Roly’s Bistro were other very popular dishes.
h4. Beer Naturally Academy
But it wasn’t just the food that lured in the crowds of around 30,000. Alcohol was also on the menu and another friend commented that drinks tents seemed to outnumber food tents this year. A new addition for 2009 that drew the crowds was the Beer Naturally Academy. For five florins, you got to take part in a beer tasting, while matching beers to favourite foods.
A master beer sommelier, Mark Stroonbandt, presented classes on how to go about matching beers with appropriate foods during eight 30-minute tastings each day.
Anthony Worrall Thompson was among a host of celebrity chefs slagging off the skills of punters who were brave enough to volunteer to take part in a demonstration, for the benefit of a crowd of onlookers.
Ballymaloe Cookery School’s Darina Allen was also there for the weekend, offering a cookery class and one-to-one advice — for a fee.
h4. Supermarket-sized taster
As well as all that, more than 100 artisan producers were there to promote their products and offer ‘supermarket-sized’ tasters. Your ticket bought you a four–hour slot to spend at the festival, leaving plenty of time to wander around chomping on limitless amounts of free Lindt and Green and Black’s chocolate, while enjoying the bands who played on a central stage.
h4. Expensive afternoon
One complaint repeated after the festival was that the standard ticket price was steep and you got nothing for it other than entrance to the venue. Others spent an additional E20 to E70 on food and drink while they were there – making it an expensive afternoon or evening excursion.
A separate event, A Taste of Ireland, takes place as part of the Irish Derby in The Curragh on June 27-28.
* For more information log on to www.tasteofireland.com.