Italian food entrepreneur Luca Montorio has created an innovative sauce that makes cooking with lemon easier for home chefs than ever before.

The new lemon sauce is the latest product to be developed by Luca, who is originally from Turin, in his role as founder and managing director of multi- award-winning PEPPUP Foods in Newtownards.

A FoodNI member, the company is best known for its authentic Italian sauces and ketchup which are produced from roasted tomatoes and peppers and have won widespread acclaim and business from Britain, the Republic and as far as South America.

“The new lemon product is the outcome of frequent approaches from retailers and customers seeking a readymade sauce for a range of dishes especially the exceptionally popular lemon chicken,” Luca says. “Lemon is popular in a range of global cuisines including Italian and Chinese. “It is an authentic Mediterranean flavour made with a few simple ingredients providing a zesty, sweet and full of body sauce for your everyday family meals,” adds Luca.

“It is made with roasted yellow peppers giving a lovely yellow colour in contrast to red roasted peppers used in PEPPUPs other range of pasta and cooking sauces. It also has Greek yogurt so is creamy and lemon juice for zestiness,” he explains.

The new sauce in a jar has no added sugar, is gluten free and uses only natural ingredients,” says Luca, who now lives in Portaferry with wife Liz, marine biologist, and two teenage sons.

A keen home cook, Luca knows the problems experienced by others in creating many types of sauces in the kitchen for family meals. This awareness led to his decision to set up PEPPUP, his own small business more than a decade ago.

Also a qualified and widely experienced marine biologist, Luca decided to produce his own Italian ketchup and sauces when he found difficulty in sourcing in Northern Ireland the quality of products he grew up enjoying in Turin, the city at the heart of Italian tomato and pepper growing and a key centre of Italian cuisine.

Coffee lovers in one of the UK’s biggest and most successful café networks in Britain can now enjoy gourmet snacks crafted by a leading family business in Co Armagh.

Caffè Nero has recently listed an award-winning range of chocolate-coated fruit and nut snacks from Forest Feast in Portadown, hugely successful snacks developed by Kestrel Foods, owner of the Forest Feast, Acti-Snack and Just Live a Little granola brands. Kestrel is a FoodNI member.

Forest Feast’s range of chocolate-coated fruit and nut ‘impulse’ snack bags are now being displayed prominently on the counters of Caffé Nero outlets. The coffee house has more than 600 stores in Britain and around 900 globally. Bronagh Clarke, Kestrel’s marketing director, described the agreement with the premium coffee house as “an immensely important breakthrough with a prestigious client in Britain”.

Kestrel, now among the most respected creators of premium snacks, is a successful family business founded and owned by Michael Hall in 1996 as an important importer of dried fruit and nuts. The business subsequently developed an innovative range of snacks and has become a trailblazer in the fast moving category.

Extensive investment at its modern plant in Craigavon included technology to enable it to create a winning range of chocolate-coated fruits and nuts and to grow sales in the United Kingdom, Ireland and even as far as Hong Kong. In addition to Caffé Nero, Kestrel now supplies most of the leading supermarkets in Britain and has become a leading innovation in the industry. Plaudits have included UK Great Taste Awards for its snacks and premium breakfast granola.

Kestrel has long been at the forefront of innovation in pioneering snacks and convenience foods and has won a series awards for its enterprise. For instance, an original healthy snack created and manufactured at the Craigavon plant, Nutmilk Choco Corn, won gold in an influential UK event for vegan foods. Forest Feast gained the top award in the prestigious Nourish Vegan Awards in Britain.

The company picked the award for the snack, part of a quartet of vegan, dairy- free chocolate treats launched by the UK and Ireland’s leading fruit and nut snacking brand.

The Nourish competition aimed “to find and reward food or beverage products that provide a nutritious plant based alternative with no compromise on taste and texture”. The awards specified that products should “provide a healthy alternative with less sugar, less processing, good nutrition and ingredients.” They also recognise “wholesome and nutritious plant based food and beverage products that will appeal to a wider market”.

Bronagh continues that the company is “continually pushing the boundaries on innovation and driving new consumers to our brand and to the category”. “We wanted to create chocolate snacks for anyone cutting out or cutting down on dairy, but found that a lot of the products on the market were closer to dark chocolate than the more mainstream milky offering,” she continues. The Nutmilk snacks, which meet stricter UK Government rules on fat, salt and sugar in foods, are coated in Forest Feast’s in-house vegan chocolate, that’s made using almond milk in place of dairy.

Kestrel also has a strong commitment to ethical trading and sustainable sourcing, dedicating to working with smallholder farms and organisations like Preda Fairtrade in the Philippines. This ensures fair prices, sustainable environmental practices, local education and empowers indigenous farmers through the sales of dried fruit and nuts.

Among other recent innovations is a world first ‘Double Dipped Peanut Butter and Milk Chocolate Dates’, joining the range of fruit snacks produced in-house by the industry leader. Other products in the novel range include sour cherries in dark chocolate and dark chocolate figs.

Caffé Nero is a premium coffee brand under The Nero Group – the largest independent coffeehouse group in Europe – and is headquartered in London. The brand, as it’s recognised today, was established in 1997 and has grown rapidly to over 1,000 coffee houses in 11 countries: the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United States.

In 2009, Caffè Nero bought and opened its own coffee roastery in Battersea, south London, which supplies the coffee to all its coffee houses and coffee brands worldwide.

Caffè Nero’s coffee has been acclaimed as the best-tasting among five major UK brands by experts at the independent consumer magazine, Which.

In August 2022, Caffè Nero was awarded a Princess Royal Award For Outstanding Workplace Training in recognition of the impact of its workplace leader development courses

Several Food NI members made the annual trip to Kerry for the Blas na h Eireann Irish Food Awards.

Networking aside, many of them took home crystal trophies. The awards were announced online and at an in-person ceremony at the Phoenix Cinema, Dingle on Friday 3rd October, 2025. Now in their 18th year, the awards are the largest blind-tasted food awards on the island of Ireland.

Jackson Roze took two awards in Veg-Based Drinks; Bronze for a Ginger and Turmeric Shot and Gold for their Regular Strength Ginger Wine. In Non-Alcoholic Fermented Drinks, there was a Gold for Moocha Kombucha’s Elderflower and Lemon flavour.

Paula McIntyre’s Blackberry and Honey Rum collaboration with Basalt Distillery got a Gold award. Long Meadow Cider won two awards; Silver for Berry Blast and Bronze for their Oak Aged blends.

There were two Chef’s Larder prizes for En Place. They won with Pickled Sour Cherries in Sweet Cherry Vinegar and Islander Kelp Salsa Verde.

Best in County plaudits went to Glens of Antrim for Antrim; Natural Umber for Armagh; Paula McIntyre Catering for Derry; En Place Foods got the Tyrone award and also the Best in Ulster Shane McArdle prize.

In Ready Meals, Avondale Foods won Bronze with their Simply Better Slow Roasted Sunblush Tomato Orzo and Regato Salad for Dunnes Stores. Deli Lites also won a Bronze award in this category for their Musgrave Torn Irish Ham and Mature Cheddar Cheese on Malted Bloomer.

Papas Mineral Company won Silver with their Dark Clove Cordial as did Thompson’s for Peppermint Tea.

Glens of Antrim won Gold with their Simply Better for Dunnes Hand-Cooked Crinkle Cut Sea Salt and Vinegar Crisps.

In Sweet Snacks, S’morealicious won Bronze for Vanilla Marshmallow while Kestrel Foods took Silver for their Peppermint Cream and Dark Chocolate Almonds.

In Breakfast Cereals, there was a Silver prize for White’s Oats who won with their Quick and Oaty Instant Oats Mixed Berries. Dundarave Estate took Gold for their Blackberry and Lime jam.

Crawford’s Rock won Bronze with Christmas Dinner Seasoning in Salts, while Favourit Foods also won Bronze with their Perfect for Air Fryer Steak Seasoning. In Vinegars, Burren Balsamics won silver for their Date, Z’atar and Cinnamon Infused Balsamic of Modena while En Place won Gold for Apple and Elderflower.

In Savoury Snacks, there was a Bronze award for Kestrel Foods Truffle and Pecorino Nut Mix and another Bronze for L’Artisan Foods’ Cassava Fritter with Beef Braised Rib.

Congratulations to all our members who bring our powerful food and drink story far and wide.

Wild Atlantic, based near Castlederg in Co Tyrone, is the latest local distillery to win business in the US for its Irish whiskey, gin and vodka.

A Food NI member ,the small distillery, which was founded in 2019 by brothers-in-law Brian Ash and Jim Nash, has begun shipping its first batch of premium spirits to contacts there in a major business boost.

A jubilant Brian Ash continues: “This milestone is more than just bottles on a ship – it’s the realisation of a vision we had when we founded Wild Atlantic Distillery: to craft spirits that embody the wild, rugged beauty of Ireland’s Atlantic coast and share them with the world.

“Bringing our spirits to the US marks a huge step forward for our team, our community, and the people who’ve supported us on this journey. To see our handcrafted drinks reach new shores is something truly special,” adds Brian.

Wild Atlantic opened its doors in 2020 with a mission to revive whiskey distilling in Northern Ireland’s North West. The small company’s original Irish whiskey, IslandMen 1921, was the first legally distilled in the region, in over a century and was launched last year to widespread acclaim.

Wild Atlantic is rejuvenating the tradition of whiskey distilling in the North West that ended in the 1930s with the closure of Watts and Co, once the biggest whiskey distillery on the island of Ireland, following a bitter industrial dispute. Watts operated from the 1700s and was famed for its Tyrconnel Irish whiskey, once among the most popular whiskeys in the US.

The Tyrone distillery, which has plans to expand its operations, is among the 12 distilleries taking part in the Tourism NI October Embrace a Great Taste campaign to showcase the quality and innovation of local spirits. Wild Atlantic, also part of Tourism NI’s Northern Ireland Spirits Trail, will be hosting tasting events this month, alongside its success gin school.

FoodNI member, Kettyle Irish Foods, Fermanagh’s award-winning craft butchery enterprise, is aiming to grow its business through strengthening further its extensive relationships with meat retailers and customers.

Based at Lisnaskea, Kettyle, now part of Ireland’s ABP Foods, is a pioneer of ageing beef for deeper flavour and texture in unique salt moss chambers made from handcrafted seaweed salt bricks – bringing the Irish Sea to land for a richer and deeper flavour to the meat.

Respected internationally, Maurice Kettyle, who has an extensive background in agri-food from his upbringing on the family farm, founded the business in 2004.

Kettyle Irish Foods has won International Steak Challenge and UK Great Taste awards and other accolades for quality, taste and innovation. Among recent innovations is a unique marrow melt butter. An earlier and successful project was the creation of delicious Guinness burgers with the brewery.

The company now also supplies Tesco and other premium butchers, as well as hundreds of restaurants here and overseas, with quality Irish beef. It also works closely with M&S Food on the development of new meat products.

It has recently launched a marketing drive to grow sales further using social media channels.

“Our strength lies in the relationships we’ve built – not just with our customers, but with the 1000s of independent farmers who raise their animals with care, skill, and deep respect for tradition,” explains Maurice.

“From family farms with just two cattle to larger-scale operations across the Kerry Hills, Golden Vale and the drumlins of Fermanagh, each partner plays a vital role in helping us deliver nutrient-rich, grass-fed meat of exceptional quality,” adds Maurice.

Grass-reared beef is regarded as being nutrient-rich, with health benefits including fewer calories, greater Omega 3, vitamins A, and B and other micronutrients.

“We know our farmers. We visit them. We support them, ensuring full DNA traceability, animal welfare, and sustainability through our Green Track standard. Together, we’re not just producing great food – we’re preserving a way of life rooted in heritage, responsibility, and pride,” says Maurice.

Three Taste of Ulster members were among the select few honoured at the Georgina Campbell Irish Food and Hospitality awards. Celebrating Ireland’s gold standard champions of the food and hospitality industries, the winners were announced at a gala lunch at the InterContinental Dublin Hotel on September 30th, 2025. They were Wine and Brine, Moira who were awarded the Neighbourhood Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year prize, while Dunluce Lodge won Best Newcomer. Cyprus Avenue in East Belfast was named Neighbourhood Favourite in the Breakfast Awards section.

Georgina Campbell is a highly-respected figure in Irish hospitality. The awards were established in the 1990s and are Ireland’s longest-running hospitality awards. Each place is judged on merit and anonymous inspectors pay for their own meals and accommodation. Georgina’s citations below detail the reasons why these members made the cut.

NEIGHBOURHOOD FINE DINING RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR 2025: Wine and Brine, Moira, Co Down

In the heart of one of Northern Ireland’s prettiest villages and now celebrating a decade in business, Wine & Brine brought an exciting new dimension to dining in Moira when it opened in 2015. Behind the classic Georgian frontage lies a modern, bustling restaurant that reflects the vision and energy of chef Chris McGowan and his wife Davina. After twenty years away, including twelve spent as Richard Corrigan’s right-hand man, McGowan’s return to his native province was much anticipated – and his first solo venture hit the ground running. Critical acclaim came swiftly, but perhaps most importantly, Wine & Brine struck a chord with local diners, becoming an enduring success and a true community asset.

Menus are rooted in the best of Northern Irish produce, with an emphasis on pickling, brining and fermenting – traditional techniques given fresh life in a contemporary context. Dishes showcase big flavours, confident combinations and the assured finesse of a chef at the top of his game. Whether it’s a classic prawn cocktail, game in season, or an inventive vegetarian dish such as salt-baked turnip ‘tatin’, every plate delivers character and quality. The restaurant’s friendly service and accessible pricing add to its appeal, while an interesting drinks list offers plenty to explore. Stylish, welcoming and full of personality, Wine & Brine is proof that fine dining can thrive at the heart of a neighbourhood – and an inspiration to others.

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2025: Dunluce Lodge, Portrush, Co Antrim

On the spectacular North Antrim coast, just outside Portrush, 5-star Dunluce Lodge hit the ground running when it launched just ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush in 2025 – and wasted no time in establishing itself as one of Ireland’s most exciting new destinations. Overlooking the Atlantic and the rugged headland crowned by Dunluce Castle, its setting could hardly be more dramatic – and this special sense of place is at the heart of everything it offers. The classic contemporary design takes full advantage of the sweeping views, while natural tones and local materials make for relaxing interiors and the blend of understated luxury with a genuine welcome has made Dunluce Lodge a retreat where guests feel both indulged and at ease. Accommodation is quietly luxurious and good food is central to the experience, with the finest local produce showcased in elegant yet unfussy menus. A celebration of the North Coast’s larder, the emphasis is on seasonality, provenance and flavour – and service is exemplary too. Warm and attentive without ever being overbearing, staff create a sense of ease that encourages guests to linger. With its unique location, refined hospitality and special food, Dunluce Lodge is setting a new benchmark for Irish coastal retreats.

NEIGHBOURHOOD FAVOURITE: Cyprus Avenue, Belfast

Family businesses lie at the heart of Irish hospitality, and few illustrate their strengths
better than chef-patron Richard McCracken’s Cyprus Avenue. Since opening in 2017 this atmospheric restaurant has been a beacon for the lucky locals of East Belfast, while also drawing discerning visitors from much further afield – quite a tricky balance to achieve. Named for the nearby street immortalised by Van Morrison, Cyprus Avenue quickly doubled in size to create a spacious yet intimate setting with a lively cosmopolitan feel. A heated terrace extends the welcome outdoors, and inside, the walls celebrate local suppliers whose produce shapes the menus – from Finnebrogue venison to Ballyhornan cheddar, Ballydrain vegetables and Peter Hannan’s famed salt-aged ribeye. Even the honey comes from their own
rooftop hives. Breakfast sets the tone with classics alongside more adventurous choices such as Glenarriff trout with scrambled eggs, tortilla and avocado. As the day unfolds, menus evolve with creative, carefully sourced dishes that reflect the seasons. A real food menu for children and dedicated vegetarian and vegan menus underline the restaurant’s inclusive ethos. Truly a neighbourhood restaurant to be proud of,
friendly, well-trained staff, skilful cooking and an emphasis on provenance have cemented Cyprus Avenue’s place at the heart of its community.

Congratulations to all of you.