Food Glorious Food

Sheila writes...Food glorious food isn't that how the song goes? Although I am thinking that Lionel Bart did not have Dingle in mind when he created that song.

But he should have because Dingle annually hosts one of Ireland's biggest food festival and 2017 sees the 10th anniversary of the festival.

Over 50 food stalls line the streets offering samples from local producers, restaurants and growers.

One of the central key concepts is the Food Trail. The idea is  that a visitor buys a book of ten tickets for €20 which you exchange at various stalls for a sample of their food or drinks. There is an amazing variety of drink choices all involving either d
Dingle Gin, Dingle Vodka or Dingle Whiskey.

There is also street entertainment, restaurants offering tasting menus and cookery demonstrations.

We arrived with friends into the centre of Dingle about 2pm and once himself had managed to park the car... not an easy task in Dingle on a busy day, we set off on our food trail.

Beginning with Beef stew at the Marina Inn,  Scallop with black pudding, delicious Macroons and on to Fish and Chips from Anchor Down. Relentlessly onward to Random Restaurant for the most amazing sticky toffee pudding before stopping off at Holden Handbags for wine tastings before settling ourselves into Benners hotel for a recover session over wine and Guinness.

While we wait for Peter to pick up the car we took refuge at McCarthy bar's catching up with friends.

A glorious day, rain held off and unsurprisingly by the end of the evening we just wanted to chill out in front of the fire and relax.

Sunday morning and we decided to head back into the mayhem and fun to try more food treats. This time it was a taco from the Dingle Cookery School consisting of pickled onion and shredded beef from cattle reared on salted grass. This is amazing, and the salted grass beef project is the brain child of students from Tralee college. They got funding for their project from the Credit Union and began rearing the cattle on grass salted by the sea and found that it produced a distinctive flavour. Now many of the local restaurants are using their beef.

Visiting Dingle would not be complete without popping into the local bookshop to see Mike and Camilla and find that there's a book launch of Trevis Gleason's Dingle Dinner cookbook. Perfect timing.

A return to Ballyferriter around the Slea Head drive is a treat, as was dinner with friends on Sunday evening.