What a great festival it was this year! I spent most of my time literally running between gigs, food tastings and learning new things in the Theatre of Food! Electric Picnic smells as good as the line up looks, and barring just two disappointments, the food was great again this year. I was live tweeting my favourite foodie eats during the festival as @FlavourIE and the feedback from my posts was great.
Now that I am back home and fully recovered, I thought it would be a good idea to put all my lovely festival eat experiences into one nice post so that should you ever bump into these food vendors at a future Electric Picnic or another festival throughout the year, you know that you can make a direct beeline to their stall and indulge in their lovely offerings!
I do have a massive soft spot for falafel, and the ones on offering from this amazing vendor were the tastiest I have ever had! I went for the spicy chicken falafel. The chicken was delicately spiced, the falafel was fresh and cooked to order all served up in a fresh floury toasted flatbread with hummous, spicy tomato salsa and red cabbage. Definitely got my award for best festival food. I went there twice. Cost €6.
Defintely not a health food, but these freshly fried floury and crispy churros (aka Spanish Donuts) sprinkled with cinnamon suagr and served up with hot dark chocolate sauce were both naughty and nice. Cost €5.
Winner of the McKenna’s prize for best festival food at EP2013, this well established outlet for excellent tasting Pakistani cuisine did not disappoint in 2014 either! Great nosh served up with a side order of theatre care of a dancing “order-shouter”, it’s all good fun, but the food is deadly serious. I had the Chicken Tikka Biryani. Wonderfully spiced chunks of tikka resting on a cardamom scented pilau and served up with a warmed nan bread. This was a totally filling and satisfying taste for the senses! Cost (with the nan bread) €9.
This Cork-based bunch of BBQ mad Bad Boys had us returning twice to their smokey heaven adjacent to the crazy Trailer Park. Our first visit was to quell exceedingly hungry appetites after bopping the night away. We were rewarded with a pulled pork sandwhich with the capacity to reduce you to a melty dribbling fool! Our second visit was with the sole purpose of having more porkie goodness, but alas they had sold out. Happily, they were serving major sized hand made burgers. They required two man hands to get on the BBQ smoker-grill – massive! Great taste from a burger wrapped in smokey BBQ flavour and smells – nice! Cost: €6 for the pulled pork and the same for the burger.
It was Sunday morning, the sun was out and there was really only one breakfast to be had: sausages. As we were at EP, it couldn’t be just any old sausages – no, gourmet sausages are what we came here for. Tempting as a foot long at 11am in the morning was, I showed some restraint and opted instead for the 6″ with everything on: gherkin, onion, pepper, mayo, ketchup and mustard. That’s all there is to say about that – sausages are damn fine! Cost: €6.
Double fried, hand cut chips served in a paper cone with salt and vinegar. OK, it was late, but there was no denying that these were damn fine crispy chips and all floury on the inside too. They allow you to salt your own chips because “they are health conscious”…what laughs!
We came for Chai Latte and left with a box of Tiny Tea Tent Tea Bags made from Rwandan Black Tea. I am sipping some as I type – it is definitely vying for my affections as the tea to potentially knock Lady Grey off the top spot. Fabulous tea, ethically sourced, fairtraded and organic. The good it enables is only matched by the taste. You can buy yours here:http://www.tinyteatent.com
I spent as much time as my gig planner would allow at the Theatre of Food this year! Highlights for me were:
Brown Paper Bag Project
Two lads from Stoneybatter brewing some interesting craft beers. Heavily influenced by the magic trickery happening at the famous Delaware craft brewery Dogfish Head Brewery, the guys gave us a demonstration of using a “Radler” to change the nose (primarily) and the pallet (secondarily) of a base craft beer to add fresh hoppy character to their product. A radler essentially has two chambers. The base beer passes from the barrel into a chamber containing hops and then into a second chamber to de-froth from which you pour your beer. This is a quick process that can quickly produce exciting nuances in your beer making each batch passing through the radler unique on the nose and pallet by choosing different hops or a hops selection.
Lily Higgins
Lily gave an unintentionally hilarious presentation of no-bake baking using raw and vegan ingredients. It was funny because she kept forgetting to put ingredients into the cake mixture, but like a true professional she kept motoring on anyways! It reminded me of myself in the kitchen that everything is flowing perfectly but the second someone tries to talk to me, I totally lose my ability to multi-task and end up mucking something up!
Diva Boutique Bakery
Diva’s Shannan was there doing what she does best : making amazing cakes and decorating them to make them even more beautiful! I suspect that their buttercream recipe is a long guarded family secret because there just isn’t any buttercream icing like it anywhere else! I had a taste of the Tuxedo Cake and it was, of course, delicious!
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