James Kavanagh loves food. From his food truck Currabinny, to his podcast What Did You Eat This Week, the presenter has nestled his way into the Irish food scene like a dumpling – his favourite takeaway at the moment – in a bowl of ramen.
With his newest venture, co-hosting Takeaway Titans on RTÉ Player – which drops tonight September 8th – Kavanagh got the chance to dive into food truck culture, right as he was setting up his own with his boyfriend William.
The show, co-hosted by Carl Mullan, will see some of the top takeaway chefs from Ireland's best Chippers, Asian, Indian, Pizza and Burger and Chicken joints, come to the Takeaway Titans Kitchen to cook up a storm for our discerning judges.
Tasked with the mighty job of tasting and evaluating all of these dishes will be Irish chef and renowned critic Dylan McGrath and takeaway expert and winner of Britain's Best Home Cook Suzie Lee Arbuthnot, as well as some guest judges in the form of Deirdre O'Kane, Hugh Wallace, Norma Sheehan, Jake Carter and Rory O'Connor aka Rory’s Stories.
"I'm mad about food in general, so I guess the opportunity to be able to eat take away food for a week straight was kind of the main crux of it", he tells RTÉ Lifestyle. "But I find the show very interesting in terms of it's a perfect kind of reflection of the food scene in Ireland at the moment. You get to really see the kind of diffusions that go on between different cultures.
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"We've thankfully a very diverse population and a lot of people have come from abroad and you'll see that the show, and then they're using kind of Irish ingredients. So you kind of see the fusion between Irish food and Portuguese food, and you see Italian fused with Irish food, Japanese food fused with Irish food."
We've come a long way from fish and chips and battered sausages, beloved and sacrosanct takeaways as they are. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, food producers have pivoted to alternate ways of getting their inventive, delicious dishes to customers, and the food scene has been revolutionised.
Kavanagh has seen this boom from the other side of the food truck window, he says, as he recently launched his food truck, Currabinny, serving a range of sandwiches, salads and more. He says his favourite part of the journey so far has been "the producers".
"Our food is so great. We have such an amazing array of organic producers in Ireland. Like, our cheese selection is world class. Even from when we're whipping up our sandwiches and our salads in the Currabinny caravan, we have such an amazing plethora of food to choose from.
"And the producers are absolutely top class. It's exciting now for me to get to know all the different producers and see what's going on."
The show couldn't have come at a better time, he says: "When I was doing the show, at the same time myself and William were setting up the food truck, so I was pulling some of the contestants aside and asked them questions. I was like, what's the margin of this? How do you price up certain things and what kind of producers you have?"
Kavanagh himself has a fondness for pizza, which he whips up at home with William during their weekly pizza dates. "I've often asked pizzerias for their dough recipes, because dough could be so different", he laughs. "We usually go do a pizza night once a week at home and make our own dough and do different toppings."
When he's feeling a little fragile, however, it's a comforting Indian he goes for, preferably from Kinara Kitchen.
If there's one thing we're missing in our food scene, however, it's "markets that are supported from a council level", he says.
"If you go to any other European countries, there's a lot of council supported food markets with loads of food trucks. It tends to be that in Dublin and in Ireland in general, it's really up to the food truck owner to fight hard to find themselves a spot to trade from, whereas I think it really should be supported way more from a council level.
"And there's a lot of unused car parks, unused green spaces that would be amazing for food trucks to all come and be collected together."
And if there's one thing he'd like to see less of, it's raisins, he says. "Raisins seem to pop their ugly heads everywhere in different salads. I hate raisins. I find them everywhere. I call them the devil's droppings. I just don't want to see raisins anywhere else.
"I think, because I hate them so much, they haunt me."
Watch Takeaway Titans on RTÉ Player.
