#donal-skehan

#donal-skehan

The spices are merely a vessel for culture, community, storytelling, and politics. The recipes were so fresh, simple, and seasonal. That's not the version of South Asian food that most people know.

Jamie Oliver's last meal would be one of his mother's roast dinners, featuring a chunk of beef or lamb or chicken, with all the trimmings and homemade sauces.

The 1,850-square-foot town house he bought has floor-to-ceiling windows, a patio and a fireplace. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit was listed at $1.1 million.

When churning out cover after cover at the saute station you can't exactly be picky about what's on the shelf above the stove. But that doesn't mean professional chefs don't have opinions about the pans they use every day during service.

The expense, return on investment, and volume of investors needed to make it a reality did not make sense. I thought, 'maybe it's time to do something new.' The amount of money you need to run a restaurant in Brooklyn or Manhattan at this point is so crazy. If you fail, the loss is massive. Here, we were able to do a major renovation, we have a 100 bottle wine list, and we can use the ingredients we want and serve them at a decent price point because our overhead is not as bad.

Joanna Page is on top form with first guests, wine lovers Gary Barlow and Olly Smith: I know nothing about wine; I'm from Swansea, I was brought up with White Lightning.

On Friday, they will close Soup Dragon on Capel Street, the restaurant they opened in 2000 without business training, without chef qualifications and, by their own admission, "knowing nothing really".

A well-designed kitchen makes all the difference when it comes to getting good food made and served as quickly as possible, but even in the restaurant world, not all kitchens are properly thought through.

Irish desserts are, in one word, resourceful. They have to be; in a nation that grappled for centuries with conflict, famine, and outright war, luxurious ingredients were not accessible to most people. Instead, the Irish turned to local ingredients like sea moss, apples, and an impressive array of dairy products to satisfy their cravings for something sweet.

I creaked and groaned and belched like a tractor. Heaving myself out of the back seat of a car took so much effort that I dreamed about a portable winch. I waddled to the bathroom four or five times a night, between bouts of heartburn. I woke up with headaches, a mouth as dry as an emery board and a heavy coating of fatigue that I could never shake.

The co-owner of Kin Dee and Four Bowls Catering chats about moving to Ireland from South Africa - and why his new restaurant will be keeping it simple

I'm passing through Kilrush on the first bright, blue-skied day after weeks of non-stop rain and it's warm enough to leave the coat in the car and think perhaps there may be a sniff of spring in the air. I hope I'm not being previous. I'm here to check out two places I've been following on Instagram for a while, having never been to this part of west Clare before.