'There is one question that gauges the real viability of Irish hospitality like no other: as a waiter/server, will I qualify for a mortgage? The answer is almost inevitably, no'

"A good ice cream, with the ideal combination of fats, sugars and flavouring, is a singular and unique eating experience, all down to the alchemy triggered by temperature, as the coldness of ‘ice’ encounters the ‘cream’."

"GIY’s Grow at School programme — establishing school gardens, providing resources and linking garden activities to the curriculum — is a quite brilliant initiative, now flourishing in 700 Irish primary schools, reaching 100,000 children."

It was a life-changing experience

"Our grandparents were so familiar with the inside of a butcher’s shop — or multiple butchers’ shops, when ‘shopping around’ was de rigueur — they could probably reassemble an entire carcass from the constituent cuts laid out at the counter, most of us now buy our meat in the supermarket; the supermarkets, in turn, mostly buy it in already shrink-wrapped from the processor."

"The vaulting epicurean ambition afoot in Mara is very apparent. It is also remarkable. To paraphrase Churchill, never has so much been cooked by so few for so many."

Food to match classy cocktails at Cask

Some commercial judges would struggle to judge a crisp-opening competition

I am now in deep mourning for the permanent loss of aubergines

From waterside tables to seaside views, each of these places will make your sunshine dining extra special