This September, October and November, the island of Ireland is welcoming the world to a celebration of the very best of the country’s food and drink.
Bring a healthy appetite, because Taste the Island is offering the opportunity of a lifetime to tuck into a profusion of flavours that evoke a unique sense of place, culture and hospitality.
From regional food specialities and local traditions to new, complex and varied gastronomy, the island of Ireland excels in elevating its native food and drink produce into top-notch tastes, experiences and memories.
As the rich harvest comes home, savour the magic behind special European PGI status foods and everything from native Irish beef, lamb, venison and seafood to chutneys, yoghurts, ice-creams and chocolates. Not to mention the island’s craft beers, ciders, gins and whiskies.
Recognised the world over for its fantastic oysters, the pristine coastline around Galway is home to some of the best seafood that can be found. Native to these Wild Atlantic Way shores and only in season from September–April, the local Galway Oyster is a revered among seafood gourmands due to its relative rarity, meaty texture and notes of seaweed and grass.
Taste them during the Galway International Oyster and Seafood Festival (27-29 September), where there will be live music, sensational seafood, mouth-watering dining and the National Oyster Opening Championship kick-starting an amazing weekend of food.
Oysters are often washed down with Irish stout, and while Guinness is most associated with Ireland, there are lots of other brilliant stouts being brewed all around the island evoking a sense of place. Porterhouse Oyster Stout is a dark and aromatic Dublin favourite, Export Stout by Boundary Brewing has a core following around Belfast, and the main geographic hold for Murphy’s is Cork.