Taste of Dublin Day 2

Day 2... first a word on the wine stalls. nothing that could be called exciting but you could while away an hour (and get pissed if you wanted) in the O'Briens Tent where you pay 10 euro to do a tour of about 20 of their suppliers. many of their winemakers are over so there are good conversations to be had - had a good chat with Mr. Ascheri about his fab hotel in Bra (where I stayed at the last slow food Salone). I like their nebbiola d'alba a lot and they are making a decent effort with their barolos at a fair price. their modern and v. cool hotel is above the winery and beside their agri tourismo restaurant so in theory you never have to leave. I digress. I confess that I havent done much of a survey of the wine stands as there are mostly commercial wines on show. there are a couple of no-name burgundy producer/negocients with stands and there are the usual promotional stands from wines of Bordeaux and wines of chile (and ourselves). berry bros have a couple of ok wines and Mitchells have some good producers but there are far too many crappy importers with big stands and no-name wines. Good beer is available from Premier beers (beside the wine australia stand) with a few trappists (chimay and la trappe) and others. Best to focus on the food.

so today i had a couple of Jaipur dishes (a fried chicken and a prawn dish) which were not earth shattering but suited the bottle of red chimay I blagged from premier beers on a swap for a couple of glasses of Lindemans sauvignon blanc.

Liked the lamb brochette from Venu a lot (v. similar to the dish served in the restaurant) - lamb was crispy on the outside and pink in the middle.

king scallop with black pudding and a pea foam (I think) from Bon Appetit was excellent. Black pudding and apple tart tatin on Lockes stand was far too sweet but I did eat it all up so I shouldnt complain too much.

Feta and spinach parcel from Silk Road Cafe was fine but no match for their falafal (see above).

Had some excellent murphys ice cream (from Dingle) and a good chat with the valrhona girls at the same stall - bad news is they are re-designing the Trinidad single estate Gran Couvo (my favourite chocolate) to bring it from the perfect 75g to 100g (presumably so they can charge more).

Scored some air dried connemara lamb from James McGeogh of Oughterard and some mossfield organic cheese from Ralph Haslam from Birr. both these products are amazing and should be sought out if you have never tried them. The air dried lamb is a world class product imo. Also the craft butchers today had excellent sausages and even better fresh blood pudding from Maguires of Ashbourne.

Should also say that the extra space really improves the event for the punters but there will be complaints from the stall holders as the extra space means less foot fall. Wouldn't like to be relying on selling enough to make a profit.