Irish Food Writers’ Guild Food Awards 2024: celebrating sustainable excellence

As Chair of the Irish Food Writers’ Guild for the last three years, one of my most rewarding jobs has been co-ordinating and organising the annual IFWG Food Awards event. Yesterday’s celebration of Irish food, sponsored by Bord Bia, was held at Suesey Street, a gathering of fellow IFWG members, food lovers and award winners, there to applaud the initiative, drive and innovation of small producers from across the island.

While today’s awards were a celebration of this country’s thriving, world-class artisan food and drink industry, we have to recognise that there are many challenges facing small food and drink businesses right now.

Many producers depend on restaurants and the hospitality industry to survive. If we don’t address the crisis facing Ireland’s restaurant sector, we will not only see the closure of many more local businesses this year, but it will have a knock on effect: the potential demise of our wider vibrant food industry.

Ireland’s producers need support from government, support from supermarket and restaurant buyers, and support from consumers who want to eat and drink exceptional Irish produce. From oysters to organic chicken and regeneratively reared meat, traditionally made pastry and Ireland’s first and only vermouth, this year’s winning products, along with our chosen producers and innovators, together make a food sector of which we can be extremely proud. They deserve our support.

The Guild launched these awards in 1993 to highlight the work of small, independent Irish food producers and organisations of the highest quality. More than 30 years later, we’re proud to celebrate the food and drinks that are the cornerstones of Ireland’s reputation as a provider of high quality, innovative and sustainable food.

This year’s winners are:

• Food Award: Carlingford Oysters, Co. Louth. It takes over three years for Carlingford Oysters to reach maturity and the proof is in the high meat content and sweet nutty flavour of these Lough-grown bivalves. 
• Food Award: Regan Organic Chicken, Co. Wexford. A case-study of an alternative food system at work, each step of the Regan Organic Chicken process is designed to care for the welfare of the birds and to maintain a close connection to nature and natural food production.
• Food Award: Roll It All Butter Pastry, Co. Meath. Comfort and convenience all rolled into one, Mairead Finnegan’ uses simple and honest Irish ingredients to produce a pastry that is easy to use and free from additives and preservatives.
• Irish Drink Award: Valentia Island Vermouth, Co. Kerry. Ór Valentia Island Vermouth has been making a splash as the first ever Irish vermouth created by the innovative wife-and-wife team Anna and Orla Snook O’Carroll.
• Notable Contribution to Irish Food: Conor Spacey, Co. Dublin. Through his work with organisations such as Food Space, and as co-creator of The Chefs’ Manifesto, Conor Spacey shows that a zero-waste approach to food in hospitality settings is not only attainable but cost effective too.
• Environmental Award: Rare Ruminare, Co. Sligo. The goal at Rare Ruminare is to produce the heathiest and best tasting meat possible. Clive Bright’s holistic grazing management approach uses carefully planned grazing events followed by long recovery periods, moving the cattle around to emulate natural herding behaviour.
• Community Food Award: Cork Urban Soil Project, Co. Cork. CUSP was established in 2017 by a collective of forward-thinking activists and creative dreamers who see food as a tool for social change. Their aim was to test and model a ‘closed loop’ community-scale waste system, one that treats food scraps as a valuable resource for the community.
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Peter and Mary Ward of Country Choice, Co. Tipperary.  Peter and Mary Ward have ben passionate champions of local food since they opened Country Choice in 1982, selling the best and most natural ingredients they can source.

The menu for the event was devised with care and style by Suesey Street Head Chef Matt Fuller (from what must have felt like a ready-steady-cook bag of ingredients!).

To start:

• Carlingford Oyster Tempura with Red Onion Pickle, Oyster Emulsion, Wakame Salad
• Rare Ruminare Slow Braised Ossobuco with Pomme Soufflé, Black Pepper Crème

Main Course:

• Regan Organic Chicken Mousseline with Morel & Shallot Stew, Irish Baby Leeks, Soubise

To follow:

• Valencia Island Vermouth Poached Pear, Roll It All Butter Pastry Feuilletine, Coffee Crème, Oat, Muscovado Ice Cream, Burnt Apple Purée paired with Valentia Island Vermouth

Thanks also to Liberty Wines and Piper Heidsieck for the wonderful wine pairings.

Find more information on the awards, including winners’ citations, on our website at www.irishfoodwritersguild.ie.

The citation that I wrote for Lifetime Achievement Award winners, Peter and Mary Ward of Country Choice, is particularly close to my heart. When I worked in the lovely café / deli URRU in Mallow, many years ago, Peter used to supply us with pasta, cheese and olive oil that he imported from Italy. His passion for the producers and their products was inspiring to those of us behind the counter and it’s lovely to see him still thriving on it.

“A country grocer” was how American food writer Colman Andrews described Peter Ward in his James Beard Award-winning The Country Cooking of Ireland, before going on to list some of Peter’s many jobs: making pots of tea for Nenagh locals at Country Choice, the independent grocers and café that he runs with his wife Mary; weighing out slabs of local cheddar behind the counter there; travelling to cook for dignitaries in Capetown and Alicante; addressing government panels on food regulation policies; distributing and selling the best of Irish and imported foods. A shopkeeper to his fingertips, Peter has always had a foot at home – anchored by Nenagh native Mary – while still being involved in the world at large, particularly the food world.

The couple have been passionate champions of local food since they opened Country Choice in 1982. It  was a time before small producers were properly acknowledged and celebrated, but the Wards could see the bounty that was available nearby. Peter remembers discovering “wonderful people who were showing food at the county and agricultural shows. If you went to these shows, you could get an endless supply of ducks, geese, Madeira cakes, apple tarts, jam, tomatoes and Beauty of Bath apples. That was the bedrock of my business at the time.”

Peter is one of the great communicators of Irish food, making the most of every platform available, be it stage, radio, television or his popular social media posts doing tastings with Mary. He has never shied away from emphasising that everyone has their own role to play, supporting “the butcher, the baker and the artisan” today rather than bemoaning their loss tomorrow, and realising – much too late – that cheap does not equal value. We can add country grocers to that list of professions to be cherished.  For their long-held belief in, and support for, local indigenous Irish food, the Irish Food Writers’ Guild is pleased to award Peter and Mary Ward with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Country Choice