With a single episode, the greatest TV show RTE have made about food in at least 25 years. Martin Shanahan jumps out of the screen, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and demands that you watch him and start loving fish.
After decades of dreary formulaic yawn inducing food programmes on Irish TV or worse, the “crayzzzzze kooky” shows, someone in RTE finally saw an episode of Jamie Oliver and realised what was missing – personality.
Where has Martin been hiding all this time? In the kitchens of the rightly legendary Fishy Fishy in Kinsale? He’s a force of nature. He is everything that made Darina a legend – knowledge,passion, humour. But he goes far beyond that, he’s an absolute TV natural. He belongs in front of the camera. Dammit he _owns_ the camera.
Honestly, I was rivetted for 30 minutes. It is perfect food TV. This show doesn’t just have potential, this could go global. With sub-titles of course. Joke joke!
And the fish, lord the fish. We’re not having our regular Friday Chicken Tikka Masala tonight, we are doing the mackerel dish that Martin showed instead. He had that much impact. And that’s the other thing, every bloody RTE food show tells you how to do dinner party food. Who the hell has dinner parties? Martin shows you how to cook gorgeous tasty healthy food quickly, for you!
If you missed the first episode, kick yourself hard and just be thankful RTE now has it on the RTE Player (even if it built on the proprietary dying Realplayer technology, but that’s a topic for another blogpost).
Hopefully this show will also be the kick up the arse Kinsale needs to start living up again to its long-undeserved 1970s “Gourmet Capital of Ireland” tag. Quick, name five places in Kinsale you would travel an hour to eat in. Exactly.
Top Chef is the only food TV show for years that I actively look forward to seeing each week. Martin Shanahan has created a second.
April 23, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I agree completely! Martin was an absolute natural in front of the camera and took the mystery out of cooking fish! No waffle, not pretentiousness… just great basic ingredients cooked well. I was delighted he showed the fish crumble recipe – I’ve eaten it in Fishy Fishy several times and have tried to replicate it at home without success!
Also, the tips about the heavy bottomed pans was great.
Roll on next Thursday!
April 23, 2010 at 3:32 pm
The pan tip was great. I never realised that they burned things. I was proud of how many fish I recognised in his test too!
April 23, 2010 at 8:18 pm
You’re damn right about Kinsale not deserving its moniker. In fact, I think Fishy Fishy has been propping up the town’s image for quite a while now. Over the last few years the quality of the restaurants has gone *down* and even the once-great ‘Man Friday’ has become very mediocre (though mostly due to the service not the food). Unfortunately, I fear this will only serve as further incentives for the town’s restaurants to increase prices, irrespective of quality.
Great to see Martin on TV though! He had a touch of Jamie Oliver about him
April 24, 2010 at 11:55 am
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see Kinsale do something spectacular again? Get a group of young hungry chefs who want to shake things up?
Colman Andrew’s book, the Country Cooking of Ireland and Darina’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking should be the guide. In the 1990s in Paris, there was a movement by a group of chefs to get away from over-priced overly-complex food. They setup restaurants serving amazing food but at very low prices because you had no choice in the dishes every night. You got whatever they wanted to give you. They were massive successes. (See Jeffrey Steingarten’s book).
I have this image in my head of a bunch of small restaurants in a town like Kinsale doing catch-of-the day or offal-of-the-day only. No “fish, steak, chicken, vegetarian”. Just whatever the fishermen or butcher had that day cooked brilliantly. Mussels one day, brawn the next. The idea being that they charge little more than your bog-standard Irish carvery or meat-and-two-veg.
And also going back to real traditional Irish food not the watery bacon and cabbage shite that passes for traditional nowadays.
Places with no ceremony or frippery, places where kids are welcomed in and the noise levels are high. Places where you feel at home.
In summary, places that embrace the economic problems of our time and build something new from them. The same source as many classic French dishes.
I don’t know if there is a sustainable business in there but wouldn’t it be amazing if someone tried?
April 28, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Fantastic show Martin, I love your simple style. Your book is just fab. Best Wishes, Margo Twomey