The eye catching achievements of our talented chefs are helping to enhance Northern Ireland’s reputation as a European centre of culinary excellence, a standing which is adding substantially to our appeal to tourists seeking a destination with a variety of attractions including great food. This is extremely important because research shows that upwards of a third of visitor spend is on food and drink. They expect to experience locally sourced food produced by people dedicated to excellent products with outstanding success.

What’s also extremely important is that our award winning chefs use our superb local ingredients. Skilled and creative chefs are helping to showcase by using the ingredients to create imaginative and original menus on a par with the best available elsewhere. Indeed, High Life, the highly regarded in-flight magazine of British Airways recently named Belfast as one of the best places in the world for good food.

The awards in major competitions and reviews in national newspapers and magazines show potential visitors that they can expect highly creative menus here with dishes using wholesome ingredients with safety and provenance.

Recent successes include three Belfast restaurants on the North Coast:

• OX in Belfast winning the Menu of the Year Award in the Cateys, the ‘Oscars’ of the UK hospitality industry;
• James Street South, also Belfast, being named regional winner in the Waitrose Good Food Guide’s Reader’s Restaurant of the Year;
• Howard Street, in Belfast being acclaimed by one of London’s top food writers in the Guardian newspaper; and
• Harry’s Shack in Portstewart winning a National Restaurant Award as the Best in Northern Ireland.

In addition, the premium quality and outstanding flavours of contemporary Northern Ireland cuisine were showcased in this year’s prestigious Irish Restaurant Awards. Indeed, it was a record year for Northern Ireland restaurants in this, the Irish hospitality industry’s most important competition.

Northern Ireland restaurants, which specialise in using ingredients from local suppliers, mostly artisan enterprises, won a record four of the top categories in the awards.

The awards, the biggest, brightest and best-ever, especially for Northern Ireland, are another significant boost for our local food and drink industry as we gear up for next year’s planned Year of Food and the year-long celebration of the very best of food and drink being produced, particularly within the dynamic artisan sector that includes dozens of companies which were extremely successful in this year’s UK Great Taste Awards.

The recognition for excellence being achieved by local restaurants supports the work of Tourism Northern Ireland in the drive to attract visitors from the Republic and other international markets. It shows that they are now able to find superb cuisine in restaurants specialising in local food and drink across Northern Ireland.

Over 30,000 nominations were received for restaurants, chefs, gastro pubs, hotel restaurants and restaurant managers in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland category winners were:

Best Gastro Pub in both Ireland and Ulster – The Poacher’s Pocket, Killnchy, Co Down

Best Newcomer in both Ireland and Ulster – Deanes EIPIC, Belfast

Best Wine Experience Kindly in both Ireland and Ulster – OX, Belfast

Best Restaurant Manager in Ireland -Saul McConnell of Deanes at Queens, Belfast

Best Restaurant in Ulster– Ox, Belfast

Best Chef in Ulster – Neven Maguire of MacNean House and Restaurant, Cavan

Best Hotel Restaurant in Ulster – Ardtara Country House, Derry

Best Casual Dining in Ulster – Graze, Belfast

Best Customer Service in Ulster – Church Street Restaurant, Derry

In addition to the awards, several Northern Irish products were featured in the gala menu for the dinner at the awards ceremony in Dublin. These were salmon from Keenan Seafoods in Belfast, which was cooked using Broighter Gold Rapeseed from Limavady and Red Hand Ale from Tyrone.

The all-Ireland cheeseboard featured Causeway speciality cheese with dulse that’s produced by Fivemiletown Creamery, now owned by Dale Farm, our biggest dairy co-operative, in Co. Tyrone.

Congratulations to all our wonderful chefs. Keep up the good work!

 

Awards keep rolling in for Northern Ireland’s dynamic food and drink industry. Our companies, both large and small, have won a cluster of major national awards over the past few weeks.

At a time when other manufacturing sectors are under severe pressure food and drink companies here are winning recognition for excellent processes and products. The achievements are immensely encouraging as we look towards our Year of Food and Drink in 2016. I am sure that there’ll be further awards to celebrate then.

Moy Park, our biggest company and now the leading European poultry processor, for instance, was named Food Manufacture Company of the Year 2015 in last week’s Food Manufacturing Excellence Awards (FMEA), the ‘Oscars’ of the UK food and drink industry. The outstanding poultry business, Northern Ireland’s only £1 billion company, also lifted the category award as meat and poultry manufacturing company of the year. Moy Park now sell over £1.4 billion and employs 12,000 people at 14 processing sites and production facilities in Northern Ireland, England, France, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland.

And Moy Park wasn’t alone in carrying the baton for the Northern Ireland team. While it was the most successful, four smaller manufacturers were also shortlisted in the awards, now in their 15^th year. They were Moira’s Hannan Meats, Mash Direct, Comber, Willowbrook Foods, Killinchy and Sydney Scott, Coleraine. They positioned Northern Ireland as the most successful region in the awards. Congratulations to Moy Park and the other local successes.

And congratulations are also due to Jack Dobson, joint managing director of Dungannon meat processor Dunbia, who was has named Industry Entrepreneur of the Year at the recent EY awards in Dublin. The annual EY Awards are regarded as the most important on the island of Ireland.

Jack Dobson masterminded the remarkable success story that is Dunbia with Jim, his brother and co-founder of the business that is now among the biggest and most successful meat processors in the UK and Ireland.

Dunbia is now Northern Ireland’s second biggest food business after the Brazilian owned Moy Park. Listed recently at four in Northern Ireland’s top exporters, Dunbia is Northern Ireland’s biggest beef processor with exports of £650 million to Europe, North America and the Far East. The company employs upwards of 4,000 people in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain. It also produces lamb and pork.

Hannan Meats also added a further trophy by clinching a gold medal in the inaugural World Steak Challenge. The Moira company gained a prestigious gold standard award for its Glenarm Shorthorn beef that’s dry-aged in the world’s biggest Himalayan salt chamber. The medal is the latest in a series of major awards for the Northern Ireland company’s steak and other cuts. These have included a cluster of UK Great Taste Awards from the Guild of Fine Food as well as two major awards in the recent Blas na hEireann awards.

CoCouture, the Belfast artisan chocolate business run by Deirdre McCanny, picked up two medals in the prestigious Academy of Chocolate Awards 2015.These were for the ‘Best Dark Chocolate Flavoured Bar’ and its ‘Ginger and Lime 70% and Coffee and Cacao Nibs 95%’ bars.

Hughes Mushrooms in Dungannon has been recognised by top retailer Waitrose a range of innovative measures to reduce carbon.

Another much smaller business, Heavenly Tasty Organics in Augher village in Tyrone gained the top organic product in last week’s Boots Maternity and Infant Awards in Dublin for its unique juices for babies. What a great foundation on which to launch into Northern Ireland Year of Food and Drink 2016, and what a great platform to promote our food and drink story to the world.