DUBLIN TASTING TRAIL

Dublin Tasting Trail - a Fabulous Food Trail

This was an exciting experience joining a group of locals and international visitors on a fabulous food trail in the heart of Dublin.

We met our guide, Eveleen Coyle, outside The Mansion House where she introduced the group to one another and then gave us a potted history of Irish food production and the cultural changes and international influences that have had an impact on producers today.  She told us of an Irish lady, Myrtle Allan, who had a passion to promote and protect the culinary heritage of Irish food and how this has developed into a rapidly expanding belief in promoting local produce and reverting to traditional ways of production.

During the morning we visited food halls, cheesemongers, butchers, bakers, chocolatiers, ice cream makers, delicatessens  etc and met with many wonderful people who have a passion for producing good honest food using local produce. We also met international sellers who held similar beliefs. At each venue we learned about the products and enjoyed tasting a whole range of foods.

Our first stop was at Sheridan’s Cheesemongers who have established a wonderful outlet for a wide variety of artisan Irish cheeses made by small Irish farming families, these are sold alongside international cheeses. We sampled some Glebe Brethan and a Gruyere style cheese; they were delicious.

We looked at one of the last remaining family butchers in the main shopping area and saw how butchery practices have changed over the years with health and safety regulations

Window displays at Healy's today

                    Now and Then!





Listons, 'the source of good food', offers the best Irish Artisan food alongside International goodies. Its wonderful range of Garden Fresh Salads using the finest seasonal ingredients, soups, cheeses, deli ingredients, snacks,  platters and dinners sits alongside a wide variety of specialist International ingredients. Esam’s Lybian Fallafels are as popular as St. Killian Irish cheese. Here we sampled some wonderful quiche and lemon grass and vegetable soup.

Irish St Killian Cheese

 

Delicious Fresh Salads

We visited an interesting building which had utilised an enormous amount of recycled material for building and decoration.  Sheep’s wool was used for insulation and rain water was harnessed to flush the toilets. This is the first pure eco building in the city centre. It must be quite exciting living there.  Within this precinct was a café making artisan breads and a variety of cakes.  We sampled some delicious lemon cake and mini iced cakes.

All the walls within the covered seating area in the courtyard were beautifully decorated with a variety of panels using recycled materials - anything from piano keys, buttons, crockery, records, wood and even tatty old books. It was very decorative and showed how items often considered as rubbish can be used to create something beautiful.

     Recycled Panels

A local chocolatier delighted us with samples of home made chocolates and macaroons. All the colourings used are from natural ingredients. A chocolate lovers paradise!

The local market stall provided samples of sausage pie.  This was followed by Murphy’s Ice Cream – brown bread ice cream and other flavours.

We even sampled Espresso coffee made the New Zealand way and a tot of whisky from the famous Swan Inn bar of the former John Lynch, a professional rugby player.

The over riding message I brought away from this tour is the passion that the various producers and sellers have for the best local produce/products which they can now supply.