Westport Festival of Food (& FUN!)

A family invitation to attend the inaugural Westport Food Festival (2-4 September 2011) got us itching to head west, so we bundled our two little boys into the car and hit the road, heading for the Hotel Westport. Centrally located and within pleasant walking distance of everything in the town, this hospitable and well run hotel is a favourite destination as it makes a relaxing base for family breaks, with excellent leisure facilities.

Like its famous predecessor, the phenomenally successful Galway Oyster Festival, the Westport Food Festival aims to extend the holiday season beyond the end of the school holidays by tapping into the growing interest in food tourism - and will hopefully become an annual event.

The festival was launched with a 5 course “Come Dine With Me Dinner” in the Wyatt Hotel where, with an admirable degree of co-operation, ten of the town’s chefs were divided into three teams with responsibility for different courses. A video link to the kitchen allowed diners to watch the chefs do their thing before voting for their favourite team. The dining element of the evening then drew to a close with the chefs joining guests in the dining room for a Q&A session before guests enjoyed some jazz.

On Saturday morning, a stretch of the recently launched Gourmet Greenway food trail was the venue for one of the most interesting events of the weekend. It involved a cycle tour along the Mulranny to Westport stretch of the Great Western Greenway with scheduled visits to local food producers including Sean Kelly in Newport, where there was a tasting of his famous black puddings and sausages - and, of course, he explained (some of) the secrets that make his fare so special! Then on down to Padraig Gannon’s Croagh Patrick Seafoods, to see where he grows oysters, mussels, clams and the rare native Clew Bay mussel, and tasting his produce. Finally at the finish, in Westport Town, there was an opportunity to meet Andrew Pelham-Byrne of the local Carrowholly Cheese (which, incidentally, features on the cover of our book, Ireland for Food Lovers).

As a planned town, Westport is a wonderful place for an event like this as its orderly layout lends itself to pedestrianised areas for stalls and demonstrations without unduly affecting normal traffic.

As well as events held in individual hotels, there were three key areas in the town for Food Festival related events on the Saturday and Sunday, each with its own purpose and identity: The Mall; behind the Clock Tower on High Street; and down on the Quays at the edge of town.

We were there as a young family so we were particularly interested in what was there for the boys. The main activities for kids were on the Sunday and included a Treasure Hunt around Westport and loads of activities down on the Quays – where there was a closing day bbq - such as puppet shows and balloon modelling. On Saturday there was face painting and the opportunity to hear The Grace O'Malley/Granuaile Story (Sponsored by Westport House) as told by real, live pirates!

On Saturday morning we began our day early down on the Mall, which gave us a chance to see the stands as they were being set up for the day and before the crowds arrived. There was a good selection of local artisan producers, giving visitors a feeling for the kind of foods that are special to the locality. These ranged from really well known and widely-acclaimed products such as Kelly’s of Newport (puddings & sausages), Carrowholly Cheese and Taste of Days Gone By (handmade jams, marmalade, relishes, sauces, and salad dressings), to a relative new kid on the block, Pat Grimes of Reek View Farm who grows top class organic vegetables and salad leaves on his plot of land nearby.

Now only in his second year in business, Pat Grimes already supplies many of the top restaurants in the area. I was particularly attracted to this stand as I grow my own vegetables and am drawn to the glow of healthy vegetables (you really can visibly tell the difference).

By coincidence, the salad we had with dinner the previous night in Hotel Westport was so good that it had been a talking point and, when I had a chat with Pat, we discovered that he was the supplier! When I later met Declan Heneghan, GM of Hotel Westport, at their stand I mentioned Pat’s product and he said that, although it cost a little more, they truly recognised the quality that he had to offer – and, not only that, but also the contribution that supporting his young enterprise could make to the local community. If only everybody who made the purchasing decisions in hotels and restaurants around the country subscribed to this ethos!

Other hotels and restaurants represented down on the Mall included the Mulranny Park Hotel, Westport Plaza Hotel, Sol Rio Restaurant and Mango, and all had dishes available for punters to purchase for a very reasonable food festival shilling each (€2). Of course I had to try them all, a tough job but I managed it in the end! Memorable dishes included Kelly’s Black Pudding, mash & onion gravy (Westport Plaza Hotel), Seafood Salad & Crab Claws (Mango) and the fruitiest trifle in memory, the Very Berry Trifle (Hotel Westport).

One stand that jumped out at us was the Boy Scout Cook Out. I believe it’s essential to get kids cooking as soon as we can and to make it fun, so healthy eating becomes a habit from an early age. So we were fascinated to see the local scouts with their fired up BBQs cooking sea trout wrapped in cabbage leaves directly on burning charcoal, a new approach to me, but so easy to do and the lads were clearly loving it.

Up behind the Clock Tower on High Street, Fringe Foodies was an area where local, artisan food producers came together not only to showcase their produce and foods, but also to have a series of food discussions hosted by a local producer with a set theme.

It was a fantastic area as it really allowed consumers to connect with local producers - initially through a talk by each producer (when they outlined what their product was, how their business worked etc) and then having the opportunity to try the product and meet them face to face. This was done on a rolling basis, meaning that if you only had a short time you could hear the full story of a particular producer and try their product.

One producer that stood out for me was local fifth generation pork farmers, the O’Malley family, with their brand “Jack & Eddie’s – finest pork & bacon”. They talked about their products, their plans for the future and had some delicious slow cooked pork belly for the audience to try, it was melt in the mouth stuff. Their product is available in Westport Country Market every Thursday and they are now focusing on getting sausages, traditional cure rashers and black & white puddings to market with a view to selling in more locations.

We had to leave the Food Fringe area to head down to the hotly contested Westport Food Festival Chowder Competition. This was contested by seven local establishments and was decided through a blind tasting by three highly experienced and well qualified assessors: Michael Cadden, who is well remembered by the Guide and locals in the area as a previous owner of The Asgard pub & restaurant on Westport Quay - members of his family now own and run Bar One Gastro Pub in Castlebar and Saba Thai Restaurant in Dublin city centre; Martin Treacy, of the Panel of Chefs of Ireland; and Michael Egan, current manager of the Irish culinary team.

When tasting the chowders Treacy informed us that they were doing so looking at texture, quality of seafood, taste and flavour. When they had finished the audience were invited up to taste the chowders, they were all delicious and full of flavour, with a wide variety of seafood used, and were all very different to each other. This led to a debate among a few people at the tables as to what would make a winning chowder for the judges – all the dishes seemed to match what they were looking for, but what would stand out the most?

Some chowders have cream, some don’t, some are made from a fish stock and bisque base, some have herbs, some even contain tomato, is there such thing as a classic chowder? Clam chowder, perhaps, but nobody seemed to know and it looked like a good chowder could come in many guises. Well, the judges obviously knew what they were looking for and they announced the winners down in The Mall later on that evening. The winner was Myles O’Brien of The Tavern Bar & Restaurant, Murrisk.

Immediately after the chowder competition there was a dessert competition which was as hotly contested as the chowder competition and was won by Knockranny House Hotel.

Meanwhile, back down on the Mall it was time for celebrated chef Kevin Dundon (Dunbrody Country House & Cookery School) to take to the stove and do a demonstration. As always the crowd immediately took to his friendly and relaxed style and he welcomed a couple of kids up from the audience to help him out. This led to the biggest laugh of the day when Dundon (who is supported by SuperValu) showed the guys dried breadcrumbs, and one of them piped up to say you could get them in Tescos! A bit of banter followed between Kevin, the kids and their mother, it gave everyone a good giggle but on a serious level it showed that cooking really could be fun, they were having the craic while cooking so why shouldn’t everyone else?

Shortly after Kevin’s demonstration, Dirk Schonkeren took to the stage to unveil the mysteries of making chocolate – no better man, as he is Ireland’s only World Chocolate Ambassador (an honour bestowed by the Swiss chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut, whose 70-strong 'chocolate ambassador club' is dedicated to passing on their skills to others). This Belgian chef and chocolatier was one of the pioneers in Irish chocolate making when they first set up their Helena Chocolates (www.helenachocolates.ie) business in 1980s Castlebar and, as with other masters of their profession, he made a difficult process look relatively easy - but with all the talk of optimum temperatures, my guess is it is anything but that!

At this point the boys had seen enough food related events for the day so we took them off to the smashing play ground up behind the cine-plex and leisure centre (loads to do for kids year round) to let them burn off some energy. Unfortunately this meant we missed some events that we adults would have liked to attend such as the Covey Cocktail Competition in Clew Bay Hotel or the Wine Tasting with Paddy Keogh of Wines Direct in Hotel Westport. But this just underlined that there was something for everyone at this event, and you could take it or leave different elements as time and inclination allowed.

Sunday was to be fun day for kids, but there was also plenty on for the adults too including Mushroom Foraging, and the “Croagh Patrick Seafood Summit” – climb the peak and enjoy mussels & brown bread at the summit, prepared by Myles O’Brien of the Tavern Bar & Restaurant, Murrisk. There was also a guided family fishing trip to Bertra Strand (all tackle etc supplied on a complimentary basis) and - the one the kids were looking forward to most - a cool Kiddies Treasure Hunt that took adventurers all over Westport and Westport House looking for clues and then in the afternoon all the action moved down to the Quays for BBQ, fish preparation & smoking demonstrations, puppet shows, face painting, balloons and more!

For an inaugural event this really was a great experience, it was clear that a huge amount of planning & preparation had gone into the weekend and that it was paying dividends, but what struck us most was how the whole community had pulled together to promote Westport. Far from the usual competition for business between hotels and restaurants, it was about getting visitors in and showing them the very best food that the area had to offer. We left discussing the restaurants and bars that we hadn’t got to and they are already penciled in for our next visit, so this co-operative approach clearly works. As for the local produce: simply wonderful!

Bob Nixon