The inaugural Galway Food Festival attracted an estimated 30,000 visitors into the city over the Easter weekend, offering more than 70 food-themed events, from cooking demonstrations to foraging trails.
More than 50 restaurants and outlets took part in the festival’s events, with some reporting an increase in turnover of between 80 and 100% compared with Good Friday and Easter Saturday last year.
Athenry free range poultry farmer Ronan Byrne was one of 21 producers and vendors at the Galway Food Festival Village.
“With small producers it is all about distribution, getting to meet the people who want to buy our product,” Mr Byrne says.
“Events like this are a way of getting our name out there, and the more our name is out there, the more people will come looking for our product. It’s a great opportunity.”
The Easter event is not Galway’s first or only food-themed festival.
In its 57th year, the Galway International Oyster and Seafood Festival is one of the country’s longest running food events. Then in Co Galway there are at least three more food-themed festivals, with one in Leenane, in Clarenbridge and in Renvyle.
Increase in food festivals
Food festivals have “sky rocketed” in the last two years, according to Helen McDaid of Fáilte Ireland’s Food Tourism Division.
In that time Ms McDaid said that her list of Irish food festivals across the country has gone from around 15 to 40, and she stresses that the list is by no means exhaustive.
Irish food tourism is growing, but according to Ms McDaid, it started from a relatively weak base.
“We’ve never really had a food culture, and I know some people cringe when I say that,” she says.
“Up until the last few years, apart from the totally converted, I would say that most people assumed anything other than Irish was probably better.
“Now we’re beginning to realise the quality and the range of what’s on our doorstep. Restaurants are moving from saying ‘our meat is Irish’ to saying ‘it’s from Hick’s butchers’ to saying ‘it’s from Hick’s butchers who gets it from Paddy down the road, and here’s a picture of Paddy.”
Bridgestone Guide’s John McKenna believes that Galway is an example of a city that has recently grown into its food culture, so much so in fact that his wife and co-author Sally McKenna dubbed the city the Gourmet Capital of Ireland when she opened the Galway Food Festival on Good Friday.
“A food culture isn’t just top-end restaurants, a food culture is good producers, markets, and a community of like minded people,” Mr McKenna explains.
“Galway never had that, Galway had wonderful mavericks and it had lots of good stuff, but it never had a sense of a unified food culture.
“What’s really interesting about this festival is that it demonstrates that that food culture is really there now.”
Outside influence
Though the focus of Galway Food Festival was to showcase local produce, producers and outlets, organisers looked to learn from other counties.
“Its different regions learning from other regions,” Galway restaurateur and food festival chairperson JP McMahon says, “When we were writing the programme for this festival we were looking to Waterford and Westport because they are successful food festivals.”
He also believes that local pride and a little regional competition has encouraged the increase in food festivals across the country.
“You see that Westport has one, and then you’re thinking, well Galway is bigger than Westport why don’t we have one?”
The Galway Food Festival finished on Monday evening.
Information on other food festivals around the country can be found on discoverireland.ie
