One of the hardest things to do is to let good people go. But when you know that what they are leaving for is greater than what they would be staying for it makes it a little easier.

Jasper & Katie have both left their mark in the Fumbally and have gone on to create something incredibly special in the West of Ireland. We’re sure they will be back with us in some shape or form in the next few years but for now, what they are doing is more than brilliant and we wouldn’t want them to be doing anything else. Their food is completely indigenous, inspiring and brave and the atmosphere they have created in their dining room is totally unique. The setting is dream like and the people surrounding them are brimming with open hearts.

Dillisk is a new champion of Irish Cuisine and a move towards a simpler life.

Guys, we are so proud of you.

 

www.dillisk.com

 

There is something so fundamentally  right about cooking over fire outdoors.

Mary Nally asked us to cook at this year’s Drop Everything festival on Inis Oirr and it was breakfast that beckoned. We wanted to do something that acknowledged the island and perhaps a nod to a time gone by. With the lost cooking method of the fulacht fia as our starting point we took to the ground and buried some porridge. An eggs dish was also needed so we borrowed some inspiration from abroad with a spiced tomato sauce, asked a local woman to bake the soda bread, eggs from the mainland and picked that morning from the island – rock samphire, sea campion and pepper dulse (the italians can do truffle, we can do pepper dulse!)

Yet as always it is not only the food that makes the memory, but the people and the place. The sun can provide joy that only landscape can improve and the friends that you share it with make it all worthwhile.

 

Smoked Seaweed Porridge buried overnight
with
purple clover sugar
whiskey gorse raisins
stewed rhubarb
& toasted almond oats

Inis Oirr eggs
with
Paula’s brown bread
Shakshuka tomatoes
rock samphire
sea campion
& pepper dulse

Drop Everything is a prototype for a festival, a profound curation of art, culture, music, food and place. Where one becomes completely immersed for the duration of their stay and where the small print reads that

*everything is subject to change

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Specials change every two days.

At the end of every month the kitchen sits down and goes through the menu for the following month. This is where we get to play around, try out new ideas, hone in on old ones and generally keep the juices flowing. All of our chefs have an equal input into these dishes and get to put their own stamp on the menu each week. Our food will always be an extension of the amazing people we work with because of this.

Looking at the specials board is a reflection of who is working in the kitchen that day, and if you knew some of our chefs you’d be able to tell straight away who’s dish is who’s.

The tag-team days are a nice way for us to pit two versions of the same dish against each other. Otherwise it depends on the seasons, whether the sun is shining or not and generally what we’re being inspired by at any given time.

 

5 mexican chillies, slow roast pork belly & chorizo chilli
-V-
Smoked Sweet Potato and White Gypsy Stout Chilli

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

free lunch for anyone who can guess what this once was!!!

hint: there were only two ingredients

 

 

 

We came across Mick late last year when he had a glut of coriander he needed to get rid of, we thought he had said 1kg and he maintains he had said 4kg. So anyway, we ended up with 4kg of coriander that week and soon began to discuss if we could get all of our herbs from him instead of imports from cyprus and israel.

We’ve been using his red Kale and potatoes all winter, and the red kale just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. It is also part of the inspiration for one of our specials – Poor man’s Asparagus and Rich man’s eggs – sautéd Red Kale stalks (as the poor man’s  alternative) with truffle poached eggs.

We are not 100% organic in the restaurant but we do try and use organics as much as we can and when its coming from 50km down the road, it’s a no-brainer. After the bit of planning we have done now with Mick we will hopefully be getting a good chunk of our summer veg from his farm in Kildare and ALL of our herbs (which amount to about 9 or 10kg per week)

 

 

Organic for him is just common sense. You’re giving your child an apple so you wash it, right? Would you then spray some poison on it to kill off any remaining bacteria? Of course not.

He would like to make organics as accessible as possible to the masses and doesn’t believe it should be or needs to be massively more expensive. The fact that organic has become something that is considered only for the more well off echelons of society  these days is ridiculous and needs to change. The majority of the time it just comes down to price, as no one in their right mind would choose chemically sprayed food over chemical free food if they were offered at the same price. Organic should be the norm, a standard that we all adhere to, but it is unfortunately seen as something exclusive. Up until the 1950s EVERYTHING was organic, there was no other way, it was just considered normal. There was no choice between organic food and non organic food, it was just food. Its the mass production industrial farming of today that is not normal.

 

We went to visit the farm last week to check up on planning for the spring season. Farmyards in February are not idyllic beautiful hives of agricultural happiness. Rather, lots of mud and the remnants of harsh weather (it did mean we got to play around on some heavy machinery though). They had just taken a bit of a beating from the storms and had lost one of their polytunnels but were optimistic about the season ahead. Just get on with it.