Taste of Cork
Although clouds threatened, the sun shone continued to shine all day on Sunday at the inaugural Taste of Cork as crowds gathered to eat and drink in the atmospheric surroundings of the Cork City Gaol. What would the former inmates have thought if they looked out the bars of their windows at the thousands of people swaping their florins for delicious satay at Jacobs on the Mall, devouring Flemings‘ layered foie gras dish, eating seasonal mackerel with a fresh gooseberry sauce from Ballymaloe House, pulling apart the Ivory Tower’s Venison Chimichurri with Chocolate and Chilli Sauce and queuing for the popular Fish and Chips with Minted Pea Purée at the Club Brasserie stand? Urru was there with pâtisserie from Richard Graham-Leigh, particularly his rich Chocolate and Raspberry Tentation and an array of fruit tartlets, Jack McCarthy brought a selection of his wares and there were freebie tastings aplenty from a variety of stalls, including plenty of offerings in the chocolate and wine side of things.
I picked up a bag of the aged basmati rice that I had so enjoyed on Thursday from Green Saffron and spent the last of my florins on a few scoops of assorted olives and my favourite butter bean salad from The English Market’s Olive Stall. With no parking available near the venue, the free park and ride was a big success, toilets were numerous and clean and extra florins were available at most corners. The people behind the stalls seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as their customers, always a good sign of an event. Now that Taste of Cork can join the successful Dublin event what’s next? Taste of Galway? I know a few people in the West that would be delighted with that…
Other bloggers on Taste of Cork:
Conor’s Bandon Blog – Taste of Cork a huge success
The LouderVoice Blog – Win a gift hamper for Taste of Cork reviews
The Dine and Wine Club – My Weekend
Update July 3, 2008: There are plenty more mini-reviews and comments on Taste of Cork at LouderVoice – check them out and make your own opinion known.
Hi Caroline,Taste of Cork was fantastic, there was such a great buzz. I hope it comes back next year!
Great to catch up with you there, albeit for such a short time. The weather totally made the event – everyone was in such good form to actually be out in the sunshine, for once. I even got a wee bit sunburnt – didn’t think that I’d need the sunblock that morning.
Hi Caroline,I think my comment on this the other day disappeared into the ether.Just to say that we have a bunch of reviews and mini-reviews of the event over at LouderVoice (http://www.loudervoice.com/tags/taste+of+cork).We’d welcome any more opinions on the event that people want to write there, via SMS or on their blogs.
The festival was good (nice vibe, weather) BUT it was too crowded- you had to queue for at least 15 mintues for food and the portions were a tad small.All in all I enjoyed it but if it was raining they’d have been rightly snookered…
Sorry Conor, there was rather a lot of ether around here lately! Will put that link up on the entry.When were you there, Pa? It was busy enough on the Sunday, alright, but I never ended up doing too much queuing – if I had to wait for too long, I just legged it to the next stall. The weather definitely helped the experience – it would have been miserable if it was raining.