Food & Drink

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Lucinda O’Sullivan’s restaurant review: Jamie Oliver’s new Irish venture, Chequer Lane, was worth the wait

Dipping their toes into the Irish restaurant scene hasn’t always gone well for Britain’s celebrity chefs. Over the years, they’ve swanned into town trumpeting their own importance with hoo-ha and PR fanfare, only to slink away in quiet defeat soon after. Most of them just don’t get Ireland, or understand that we have our own great food scene, and we’re not so easily impressed.

Neven Maguire: ‘At work, each chef picks a music mix to play. Our head chef isn’t the biggest fan of my ones’

Cavan-based chef Neven Maguire runs MacNean House and Restaurant, and his eponymous cooking school. His new book More Midweek Meals (Gill Books) is out now.

Susan Jane White’s dark chocolate sesame bars recipe will help you quit the biscuits — and it’s menopause friendly, too

I love sesame for its irresistibly chewy smack. Inside each teeny seed is a freight of plant-based calcium. Woo-hoo!

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Slow cook your way to winter warmer heaven with Rachel Allen’s recipes for pork, lamb and a tasty veggie tagine

At this time of the year, we crave hearty, comforting, cosy food that will nourish us and hug our souls. Whether you’re slow-roasting a piece of meat or letting a stew quietly bubble away in the oven or on the hob, it’s always so gratifying when the prep is done and all you need to do is wait.

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Looking for affordable, award-winning wines that support local traders? Try these delights

I was sorry to read that one of my local independent wine retailers is shutting up shop. Provender & Family is Jenny Lyons’s thriving little cafe close to Phoenix Park — and is thankfully set to continue serving good coffee and serious sandwiches to their loyal customers.

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Donal Skehan’s sweet November bakes — dark chocolate polenta cake with salted caramel, sticky apple buns and spiced carrot cake

As I write this week’s column, I am in bed with a cold, the rain is pelting the window outside and the wind sounds as if it might take the roof off. Standard Irish winter weather that still takes getting used to even though we are home from living in California nearly three years now. My wife, Sofie, missed the seasons while we lived in Los Angeles and I remind her of this when we get caught in one of those sideways rain storms where no part of you escapes the wet.

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Anna Haugh at the Conrad: ‘There are so many better options in the city than this pricey, unexciting celebrity chef pop-up’

Anna Haugh’s new restaurant has been open a week on the night of my visit, but there’s still no menu up on the website. I’ve gleaned from social media that there is a tasting and an à la carte menu, but I don’t know what they cost, and the wine offering is a mystery. Hopefully this will have been rectified by now.

Susan Jane White’s creamy, comforting chestnut and sage pasta recipe makes a quick and easy meat-free meal

Eating cannot resolve our problems. This dish won’t pay the gas bill, it can’t undo the red sock in the white wash, and it couldn’t possibly solve your teenager’s hormonal mayhem. But what it can do is soothe disappointment and massage frayed nerves. That’s where food can help.

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Rachel Allen’s banana recipes for pudding, muffins, cookies and bread will have them saying thanks a bunch

Creamy, soft and sweet, bananas are a unique fruit that love being mashed, chopped or sliced into puddings, pies and cakes. Of course, they’re not only ideal for desserts and treats, they can be just as happy on a plate of savoury food. I love to fry sliced banana in a little butter and serve it with bacon for breakfast — in the American south, fried chicken is often served with fried bananas.

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Sensational sherry worth geeking out about

Sherry geeks rejoice and unite — International Sherry Week ( November 7-13) is back with the excuse to gather together to nerd out about this most beguilingly complex style of wine. If I’m sounding zealous, please bear with me: there’s something about this multifaceted Andalusian wine with its diverse expressions, from bone-dry Fino through complex Amontillado and rich Oloroso to sticky-sweet PX (Pedro Ximenez) that turns its fanbase into commission-free sales reps. Like the sea swimmers of the wine world, we can’t help evangelise its thrills to anyone who’ll listen.

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Donal Skehan’s favourite slow-cooker recipes: turkey chilli, chorizo bolognese and a Thai-style chicken

I have a confession to make. While living in LA, I agreed to appear in one of those infomercials you see late at night for products promising to change your life. It was not an exercise machine promising rock-hard abs or a mini blender with 75 attachments. Nope, I got sent a slow cooker. To be fair, it was pretty damn good and as a result, I agreed to the 20-minute infomercial .

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Tang review: ‘Our bill comes to €28.35 for one of the most pleasant, unfussy lunches I’ve had in a while’

“Charming Intelligent Staff,” reads the sign in the window of Tang, “One More Needed.”

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Lucinda O’Sullivan’s restaurant review: Pricey, disappointing food with an Oirish flavour at Anna Haugh’s Conrad pop-up

My first-night visit to Anna Haugh’s pop-up in Dublin’s five-star Conrad hotel in Dublin 2 was a strange experience. Disturbing in a sense, because I’d been really looking forward to it, and, frankly, was kind of shocked by its failings. I’d had all the PR blurb but already admired this Tallaght-born chef’s success across the water. Haugh has her own restaurant, Myrtle, in Chelsea and is a regular on Saturday Kitchen and now she’s a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals.

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Lucinda O’Sullivan’s restaurant review: Cavistons, the Harrods of SoCoDu, has a stylish but pricey new brasserie

While it may have taken Cavistons of Glasthule, Co Dublin, 25 years to launch its second restaurant, it was well worth the wait. Unveiling itself recently, just a few doors up from the mothership, this stylish new brasserie has had the locals hopping with excitement.

Kids will love these spooky banana ghosts — Susan Jane White’s gut-healthy Halloween recipe is scarily good!

Fancy sneaking a freight of prebiotics and probiotics into your childer on Halloween night? No spells or incantations?

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Add some pumpkin spice with Rachel Allen’s gorgeous gourd recipes — there’s soup, chicken... and cake!

Pumpkins and squash — part of the gourd family — are extremely versatile, and happily for those of us who love them, they’re nutritional powerhouses too. Whether mashed, braised or roasted, they make a great accompaniment to meat, fish, pasta and pulses, and are super as the main event themselves.

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Donegal chef Kwanghi Chan: ‘As a Chinese guy leading a young team in a Michelin-starred restaurant, you couldn’t show any weakness’

At noon on a crisp autumn day, Kwanghi Chan is sitting at a corner table in his smart Bites restaurant in Dublin’s Capital Dock, watching the comings and goings. It’s starting to fill up with lunchtime customers but, while he says there are plenty of customers, in common with every other restaurant owner in the country, he’s dealing with the ongoing issues of increased ingredient and energy costs. He is worried about what’s going to happen over the winter, “when the heating really goes on”.

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Looking for value and excitement? Try these Portuguese charmers

Too often in the wine world, consumers must choose between value and excitement. In recent decades, however, Portugal has carved a unique niche of delivering both in spades.

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Kwanghi Chan’s Irish-chinese cookbook: Takeaway-style sweet and sour, pork and chive dumplings and beef chow mein

Serves 4 In the Hong Kong version of beef chow mein, the wok-fried noodles give it an extra-crisp texture compared to the northern Chinese versions. When you take that first bite of the noodle pancake (as I call it), you will hear the sound in your inner ear. Texture is everything in Chinese cooking, and this dish is a good example, from the crispy noodles to the silky sauce. It hits all the right notes.

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An Port Mór restaurant review: ‘Local and seasonal has become a cliché but when a kitchen truly buys into it like this one has, it’s to be commended’

I rarely eat on my own in restaurants, not because I have a thing about solo dining but because I prefer to share food, and eating with other people gives me the opportunity to try a greater variety of dishes. But I’m in Westport for a meeting and I don’t know many people here, so it’s Katy-no-mates looking for somewhere to eat on a rainy Tuesday evening.

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Donal Skehan’s spooky Halloween recipes — deadly doughnuts, cheesy witch fingers and pumpkin soup

The excitement for Halloween in our house is palpable. Every corner of the house has been adorned with skulls, black cats and spiderwebs since the start of the month, though I did draw the line at pumpkins until last week so we didn’t end up with rotten gourd carcasses sitting on our doorstep . Finally Halloween is upon us, and whatever way your family chooses to celebrate the spooky season, I have three recipes to get you through.

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Irish seaweed is an amazing super food, so why aren’t more of us eating it?

‘If only seaweed had the same PR as goji berries, blueberries and kale,” says John Fitzgerald of Atlantic Irish Seaweed in Co Kerry. “It needs rebranding if we’re ever going to get it into the mainstream diet.”

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Lucinda O’Sullivan’s restaurant review: Custard tarts and a tasty hangover cure at new Portuguese spot Alfama

If you’ve ever been to Lisbon or the Algarve on holiday, you’ll no doubt be familiar with pasteis de nata. Well, for anyone who isn’t, the good news is that these luscious Portuguese pop-in-the-mouth custard tarts, much like dryrobes amongst the SoCoDu swimming set, have become hip and hot in fashionable

Cupcake Bloke Graham Herterich’s barmbrack recipe will turn this Halloween trick into an everyday treat

He’s best known as The Cupcake Bloke, but there’s far more than fairy cakes to Graham Herterich’s culinary repertoire. In fact, his new book Bake, Traditional Irish Baking With Modern Twists, includes over 100 recipes for everything from breads and scones to puddings and tarts.

Embrace a meat-free meal with Susan Jane White’s veggie-packed Moroccan chickpea recipe

United Nations scientists are urging us to help in the fight against global warming by switching to plant-based meals. Nope, they’re not asking you to give up meat, or to fall in love with tofu, they’re simply asking us to flirt wildly with vegetables and to give beans another chance. The planet will be happier, as will your wallet and your health insurer. I’m here to help you with that hat trick.

Standout Rhône-style blends and complex Cape whites

At two recent wine tastings, two wines that stood out for value were South-African Rhône-style white blends. The first, from Aldi’s new autumn-winter cellar, features equal parts Grenache and Roussanne with one-fifth Marsanne (think full-bodied and fragrant). These are grown in Voor-Paardeberg, a small ward of Paarl just below Swartland. The combination of cooling Atlantic winds and old soils — some granite-rich for freshness; some shale for richer, fatter expressions — are attracting several of Swartland’s ambitious young winemakers to venture south. After Aldi’s well-balanced blend had caught my attention, closer investigation revealed it is made by Trizanne Barnard. One of the winemakers who has been mining the freshness that Swartland offers, Barnard first made wine in the iconic Klein Constantia winery before setting up Trizanne Signature Wines, whose elegant wines from Elim and Swartland can be explored on Searson’s shelves.

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Donal Skehan’s showstopping chocolate mud pie with oozing cheat’s caramel sauce and peanut brittle

Lately, I’ve been reminding myself to soak up the particular phase of parenthood we are in. More often than not, our focus is on how to break up a fight, clean up the chaos in the playroom, or get the lunch boxes packed in the morning. It’s easy to forget the bigger task at hand — helping to mould little minds and give them the best of ourselves. Well, that and maintaining some form of sanity. While we might not always get it right, routine and structure is what we strive to provide.

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Chequer Lane restaurant review: ‘I have nothing against Jamie Oliver but our experience was disappointing’

"Let me show you straight to Siberia,” says our host. Of course, that’s not what she actually said, but that is how it felt. Open less than a wet week and Chequer Lane by Jamie Oliver is as busy and noisy as you’d expect at half eight on a Friday night.

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These are seven of the best air fryers to buy now, according to experts

Over the past year, you have likely been subjected to a sermon from one of many evangelical air fryer owners about the wonders of the kitchen appliance.

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These are seven of the best air fyers to buy now, according to experts

Over the past year, you have likely been subjected to a sermon from one of many evangelical air fryer owners about the wonders of the kitchen appliance.