Ireland's culinary renaissance has come

Ireland is ready to take on the most demanding of food tourists, as Sue de Groot discovers when she 'taste tests' six restaurants across the length and breadth of the Emerald Isle

No art student has ever questioned why Botticelli's Venus lived in a scallop shell. Scallops are the most delicious of all sea creatures. Who (except someone with allergies) wouldn't want to move in with one?

Even cooked from frozen (sadly the only kind we get in SA) they are acceptable, but to experience true scallop renaissance one must eat them fresh. Irish scallops, in the right season, come straight from the briny sea. They emerge Venus-like from their shells with flesh that is firm and pale and gleaming, bordered by a blushing crescent of roe. They taste like a dream one can't quite remember: a phantom wisp of fishiness followed by a passing, ephemeral sweetness.

In Ireland last year, my happiness began with grilled Castletownbere scallops at Aherne's Seafood Bar in Youghal (1) (pronounced "y'all"), where Walter Raleigh landed Ireland's first potato shipment. We had lunch at Aherne's on our way to a tour of the Jameson distillery in the town of Midleton. Whiskey goes very well with scallops, but if you eat them twice in one day you risk offending the other ocean inhabitants, so that night at Fishy Fishy in Kinsale (2), I chose fish pie instead.

Fishy Fishy, owned by celebrity chef Martin Shanahan (below) and his wife, Marie (their children, Jack and Lucy, also help out once homework is done), is one of Ireland's top seafood restaurants, frequented by members of the yachting-and-golfing community of west Cork.

Many seafood restaurants are decorated with pictures of fish. On the walls of Fishy Fishy are giant photographs of men with broad smiles and eyes wrinkled from sea spray. Beneath them is written: "Thou shalt have a fishy on a little dishy, thou shalt have your dinner when the boys come in."

Each portrait bears the fisherman's name and how long he has been in the trade. Shanahan points out three generations of Hurleys - Christy, Dave and Desmond - who have respectively been fishing for 60 years, 28 years and two years.

"These are the food heroes," says Shanahan. "I tell my customers and staff: you have to respect these guys. We wouldn't be serving and eating this food if not for them."

Each fisherman specialises in a different catch, be it crab, monkfish, lobster, sea bass, turbot, oysters, John Dory or those incomparable Irish scallops. My fish pie contained scampi, salmon and white fish in a cream sauce with a helmet of crispy herbed breadcrumbs. It consumed me to the extent that I cast not one envious glance at my colleague's pan-fried scallops with Rosscarbery black pudding, creamed parsnips and a lemon and thyme dressing.

You might not think the delicate scallop could stand up to a lout like black pudding, but appearances can be deceiving. A few days later and many miles to the north, I tried scallops with crumbled black pudding and apple sauce (which is the traditional accompaniment to the spicy sausage) at Browns in Derry (3). In keeping with the peace that now pervades this once-divided city, what should have been warring elements integrated happily on plate and tongue.

Ireland is full of such paradoxes. The best fruit crumble I have yet tasted was at the café adjoining the Irish National Famine Museum inStrokestown (4), county Roscommon.

And in the town of Bushmills (5) (where the other whiskey comes from), we were served a platter of French and Irish produce (Donegal salmon, Coleeney cream cheese, cured meats from Aveyron in France, baguette with Ballyshrane butter) at The French Rooms. The owners, Roy and Stella Bolton, were inspired to open this bistro and décor shop after a visit to Franschhoek in South Africa.

Similar global whimsy filters through Ard Bia, which shares premises with Nimmo's pub on the bank of the River Corrib in bohemian Galway (6). The outer stone wall is as encrusted with food awards as the river is with swans. Ard Bia means "high food", but in typical Irish fashion the finest food is to be found in the most casual surroundings. Co-owner Aiobheann (pronounced "Ay-veen") MacNamara says in her cookbook: "In this little house we laugh, we work, we welcome and we learn. We don't want to take ourselves too seriously but we do want to do our best and to make people happy."

One side of the menu is devoted to suppliers (Morgan Maguire Meats, Gannet Fishmongers, Sloe Hill Farm, Gubbeen Smokehouse and the like) and the other lists the day's specials. Ard Bia is one of those places where you have food envy at the same time as falling deeply in love with your own order. I worshipped my spiced lamb, feta and pine nut borek (a kind of samoosa with thin, melting pastry), but coveted my colleague's savoury baklava with beetroot, feta, pistachios and sorrel.

I re l a n d’s food renaissance has come. Like Venus, she has emerged from her shell and is ready to take on the most demanding of food tourists. Order the scallops.

Sue de Groot was a guest of Tourism Ireland . Call 011 463 1132, visit www.ireland.com or e-mail tourismireland@devprom.co.za