Get ready to loosen your jeans, Taste of Dublin, the vibrant food festival, has kicked off once again in the city's bucolic Iveagh Gardens, and brought with it a host of foodie experts and their delicious creations.
Already a highlight in the Irish event calendar and running from 16-19 June this year, Taste has only gotten better in recent years, as a slew of new and dynamic food producers and creators pitch their tents in the coveted festival grounds, alongside festival favourites and pioneers of Irish cooking.
This year features such foodie heavyweights as JP McMahon of the Michelin-starred Aniar, Jordan Bailey and Scott White of two Michelin-starred Aimsir and Rory O'Connell of Ballymaloe Cookery School and more on the Neff Taste Kitchen, where they'll be cooking up a feast and sharing their hard-won cooking tips.
Elsewhere, you'll find sumptuous dishes from the likes of Pickle, Bites by Kwanghi, King Sitric, Chimac, Nomad Lads, Bahay and more, while a range of musical acts will keep the vibes in check across the weekend.
We caught up with some of the chefs and food producers on the first day of the festival, to hear who they'll be checking out and what their go-to barbecue and summery recipes are. Watch the video above for their tips.
Looking out across the vendors on the day, JP says, his go-to is Pickle, the beloved Indian restaurant headed up by Sunil Ghai, though he'll be trying out newcomers The Salt Project, as well as a few oysters from King Sitric. "You get a great sense of the flavours that Ireland is into at the moment", he says.
"It's interesting, you can say it's on two different trajectories. One is where we look at indigenous Irish foods like wild foods and seaweed and use them, and then on the other side you have an immigrant population that has been growing and people who are bringing food from different parts of the world."
As for his summer recipes, he's a fan of the auld barbecue and pizza oven, getting his daughters stuck into shaping dough and personalising pizzas. His main tip for cooking over coals, however, is get the right equipment, especially a food thermometer.
"Plan out what you're going to cook. Don't just go into the supermarket and buy sausages and chicken wings and burgers and then realise they won't all fit on the barbecue."
He adds that you can cook food in the oven first to free up space, and then finish it on the barbecue for that mouth-watering char.
When it comes to his own barbecue spread, it's a relatively traditional affair. "In spite of having three restaurants and eating lots of strange and weird amounts of food, when I have a barbecue I just love really good sausages and burgers.
"There's so many craft butchers in Ireland and some in supermarkets now where you can get amazing sausages. Don't always go for the regular sausage, there's loads with great fillings. I think if you put the time in when you're shopping to make sure you get the right ingredients, then you're going to have a good time."
Fresh off her win for second place in the Best Dressed Stand award, Gráinne Mullins of Grá Chocolates is particularly buzzing to be at Taste, their second ever food festival since launching in 2020.
As well as being one of Ireland's boundary-pushing chocolate makers, Gráinne is a devoted home cook, and told RTÉ Lifestyle that this summer was all about salads picked fresh from her mam's garden back home.
"I'm cooking anything light, I'm really going for salads", she says. "I'll pick up anything that's around me, I love fish during the summer time. Of course, desserts, I love to keep it really fruity, fruits that are in season."
This will be the focus of her demo on Saturday on the Neff Taste Kitchen, where she'll make a Black Forest gateau-inspired pavlova. "It'll have beautiful fresh cherries, lots of fresh cream and, of course, chocolate!"
A firm believer in cooking your whole meal on a barbecue, Gráinne is an expert when it comes to barbecued desserts. Alongside marinated gambas fried over the coals, oysters and sweetcorn drenched in butter, Gráinne loves to serve barbecued fruits either as part of a salad or as the dessert itself.
For something especially luscious, she suggests trying melted chocolate inside a barbecued banana.
As the winner of last year's Battle of the Food Trucks, chef Kwanghi Chan is a pro when it comes to dishing up delicious food from his sought-after food trucks.
His restaurant and wine bar Bites by Kwanghi has become one of the hottest spots to dine in Dublin, thanks to his melt-in-the-mouth dumplings and plates full of complex flavours. But when it comes to cooking at home – especially in summer – he's all about the "simple things", he says.
"I love big flavours and minimum work. Salads flavoured with soya, sesame oil, chillies, coriander – real fresh flavours. I might throw some watermelon in there. I love fusion kind of things."
He's also big into barbecuing, whipping out his Green Egg barbecue to smoke ingredients as well as cook them to perfection. "I love doing big massive pork bellies, marinated for 24 hours with some szechuan, honey, some kind of spice, and then giving it a lovely crisp on the barbecue the next day. Slice that off, maybe do a little bao with it, with pickled cucumber."
As for his barbecue tips, it comes down to getting the foundations right. "It's all about the flame. Make sure you get the right coal, charcoal that holds the heat. Make sure that it burns off and it's not smoking anymore. If you're cooking with wood chips, soak them in water first so they don't burn as fast, so they slowly smoke.
"Don't be afraid of it, just go for it. It's barbecue, it's what you're supposed to do, cook on flame!"
For more information, visit www.tasteofdublin.ie.
