Archive News
New Galway food festival aims to leave lasting taste
Date Published: {J}
When times are tough, there’s strength in numbers. As part of this, a group of Galway restaurants and food producers are joining forces over the Easter weekend for a Food Festival to focus on the best of Irish fare and to show people we still have reason to celebrate in spite of the economic gloom.
Most of the events will be based in the city, with a special Festival village in the Fishmarket Square by the Spanish Arch. But there will also be trips outside, to places like Connemara Smokehouse and an organic farm in Athenry, as well as excursions to the seashore where experts will show people the wealth of free, nutritious food that is available to us – if we want to avail of it.
The Festival will be opened by Sally McKenna of the Bridgestone Guide at Fishmarket Square on Good Friday, April 6, which is traditionally the worst day of the year for the restaurant trade. And the organisers are making no secret of the fact that they want it to benefit the city and its environs.
This Food Festival was the brainchild of the businesses in Galway’s Latin Quarter who joined forces several years ago to attract people into that area of the city, on the basis that co-operation was more beneficial than rivalry.
Unlike previous initiatives of the group, this Festival is not confined to the geographical area of the city from Mainguard Street to the Spanish Arch. Some of Galway’s leading restaurants are taking part, including Kai, Aniar and Bar 8, while in the county, the Gallery in Gort, The Twelve in Barna and Taste Matters in Loughrea area also involved.
The Chairperson of this inaugural festival is JP McMahon, owner of Cava and Aniar restaurants, who was approached by the Latin Quarter group with the idea. He felt it had real potential as long as it was about improving food quality and not just about selling drink.
“I love the idea of bringing better and better food to Galway. The more people saying ‘we need to do better food’, the better,” says JP, whose Spanish restaurant, Cava, is one of the most popular in the city, with its choice of smaller style tapas dishes and main courses.
“Our attitude is ‘let’s not exclude a restaurant [from the Festival] because it doesn’t meet the quality, instead let’s get them to raise the bar for the weekend.”
There are three criteria for restaurants becoming involved, explains JP, who has helped put Galway City on the food map through Cava and more recently Aniar, which specialises in locally sourced, frequently foraged foods.
The three rules are that the participating restaurants must use local suppliers, local produce and seasonal food.
“There must be three items on the menu that draw from local, seasonal and artisan produce,” explains JP.
The Festival is mixing artisan and national suppliers because the reality for most restaurants is that these elements work together, he points out, citing his own restaurants as an example.
While all the wines in the fine-dining Aniar are from artisan vineyards, the suppliers to Cava include wine and spirit importers, Findlaters.
“It’s an issue of supply and demand. If you go down the route of using artisan, you have to accept you can’t turn artisan suppliers into multinationals. Artisan is good but it won’t solve every food issue in Ireland. If you produce food on a smaller scale, it’ll be more expensive.”
The idea is to find a balance on restaurant menus between bigger suppliers and local produce.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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