The line-up was recently announced for Me Auld Flower, the St. Patrick’s Weekend food and drink festival from the makers of The Big Grill, which took place last month in the Dublin City Fruit, Veg & Flower Market on St. Michan’s Street, D7.

The food providers include Hot Flavours favourites like Bahay, AA’s Caribbean, Big Fan Bao, The Salt Project, Corleggy Cheese and Los Chicanos.

Helping to wash all that down will be Neighbourhood Wine, Rascals, White Hag, Kinnegar, O’Hara’s, Dot Brew, Dublin Cocktail Lab and Stillgarden Distillery.

Add in demos from such kitchen heroes as JP McMahon, Lily Ramirez-Foran, Paul Flynn, Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma, Jordan Bailey and Shauna Froydenlund; an Onion Eating Competition, Coddle Cook-Off and Auld Dublin Street Games; and tasty tunes from Billy Scurry, Dublin Ukulele Collective, the Mr Whippy Soundsystem and more, and it promises to be a feast for all the senses. meauldflower.com.

Kinnegar, DOT Brew and Stillgarden are also confirmed for April 28 and 29’s Happy Days Beer & Food Festival, which is being hosted by Rascals in their Inchicore, Dublin 8 brewpub.

With Blacks of Kinsale, Hopefully and Whitefield also quenching thirsts and Indian street food evangelists Dosa Dosa among the food offerings, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
rascalsbrewing.com.

Whiskey lovers will have to be quick off the mark to bag themselves one of the 500 bottles of The Grace X KinMX Whiskey Edition that are being released in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

An 18 x 12 metre public mural created by Dublin visual artist KinMX has been dissected into 500 sections which will accompany the 13-year-old grain Irish whiskey, which was matured in first fill American bourbon casks and then transferred into Amarone Della Valpolicella barrels and refined for a period of six months. Awesome! graceomalleywhiskey.com.

One of our food truck favourites, Órale, is taking up permanent Thursday-Sunday residence at the Pawn $hop, a posh dive bar – no, it’s not an oxymoron! – that’s just opened its doors on Dame Street.

Orale.

The D2 nosheratti will get to enjoy some of the city’s finest south of the border fare including a 12” Masa Fried Chicken with Almond & Chile de Arbol Salsa quesadilla that’s guaranteed to make you go “arriba, abbiba, ándale, ándale!” – and such like things! facebook.com/oralestreetfood.

Lidl’s My Street Food range now includes Insect Burgers, a mixture of textured soya flour and ground dried mealworm lava retailing for €2.99 a pack.

Needless to say, Team Hot Flavours was in like Flynn and can report that these protein-packed patties are falafel-like in both texture and flavour.

Tipple Of The Month

Wicklow Wolf 5.5% Another Nut

No. 37 in Wicklow Wolf’s Endangered Species Series – we’re pretty sure we’ve tried all 36 of its predecessors – is a velveteen stout brewed with milk chocolate, speciality chocolate malt, Tanzanian cocoa nibs, milk sugar and roasted hazelnuts and tastes absolutely yum. At 5.5% it’s highly sessionable and, if you want to savour it in its natural habitat, available on tap in their Newtown Mount Kennedy HQ. Otherwise, hit your local off licence up for this magical elixir, which is an early contender for Irish Beer of the Year. N.B. Any resemblance to Nutella is purely coincidental. Honest.

Great Irish Things To Eat

An Cnoc Dubh
A recent trip to Galway reacquainted us with this goats’ cheese that other goats’ cheeses call the Guv’nor. Handmade in small batches by Larry and Anne Maguire in Dunmore near Tuam – we’re surprised The Saw Doctors haven’t written a song about it! – these ash-rinded cheese pyramids are light and fluffy with a lemony hint that gets more pronounced as it ages. Similar to France’s Loire Valley Valençay – but better! galwaycheese.ie.

The new issue of Hot Press is out now.