Coleraine-based Whoosh, a FoodNI member and a specialist in instant noodle pots
and other Asian foods, has taken its first step into international markets with the
successful delivery of its products to a fine foods distributor in Eastern Europe.
The first shipment of instant noodles has been delivered and a second order has
already been confirmed for dispatch before Christmas̶, signalling strong early
demand and growing global interest in the Northern Ireland artisan brand that’s well
established here.

The breakthrough deal in Eastern Europe was revealed by Whoosh founder Thana
Thammavongsa, a chef/entrepreneur and creator of the small business in 2008 “to
share the rich flavours, vibrant
culture, and authentic stories of Thai and Vietnamese
cuisine”.

What began as private and corporate catering soon evolved into a street food café in
Coleraine. a distinctive range of Instant Noodle Pots inspired by the same culinary
heritage.
Whoosh then expanded into the production of a range of instant noodles
for home cooks.

Thana continues: “Whoosh noodles and other foods are crafted with care, using only
the finest ingredients. Ready in just five minutes, Whoosh’s instant pots deliver
authentic taste and wholesome nourishment – a versatile base for creativity and
quick, flavourful Asian meals at home

“Customers can easily personalise their noodles by adding their own protein,
vegetables, or even leftovers ̶ helping to reduce food waste while creating a
satisfying, balanced dish,” adds Thana.

The Whoosh range of instant noodles, she continues “currently features seven
flavours, each offering a balance of quality, convenience, and vibrant taste that
reflects the brand’s Southeast Asian roots”.

The Coleraine company’s first international shipment was dispatched via the client’s
established logistics hub in Belgium.

“We’re thrilled to see Whoosh beginning to travel beyond the UK and Ireland,” says
Thana
“It’s a great sign that there’s growing international appetite for quality,
convenience, and rich flavours,” adds Thana.

The business opened its innovative Thai and Vietnamese street food café in 2013 in
Coleraine town centre and quickly gained a reputation for its fresh selection of Thai

and Vietnamese street food, freshly cooked by Thana and her team on site every
day.

The small café’s unique menu is made up of a blend of Thai, Lao and Vietnamese
foods that “offer a great balance of delicate flavours and textures to give you all the
enjoyment of great food as well as a healthy diet”.

“Our food is all about fresh, healthy and delicious fast food served in a casual setting
or as an ideal food on-the-go alternative. Following the success of the café, we
invested time in product development and turned our recipes into a range of instant
rice noodle products for the food-on-the-go retail market,” adds Thana.

The rice noodles proved to be a hugely successful new direction for the business.
They were recently included in the Grow with Aldi initiative with the German-owned
supermarket chain in the Republic of Ireland.

As well as customers here, Whoosh has also supplied instant noodles to the iconic
Selfridges in London, one of the UK’s most prestigious and influential department
stores that also features an impressive and popular food hall. Whoosh is among a
handful of local companies supplying food products to Selfridges. It was then the
company’s first business for instant noodles outside Northern Ireland.

Thana remembers: “I was thrilled to receive the approach from such a prestigious
and influential food store as Selfridges, one of the biggest stores in the world and
one with a great commitment to quality and innovative food.”

Cartons of Whoosh Vietnamese instant curry, Thai red curry and Thai Tom Yum
noodles were supplied to the prestigious store in London’s busy Oxford Street.
Thana says it was “tremendously exciting business for us”. “At Whoosh, we love
cooking, we love eating! We always think about food, we dream about food…
especially Thai and Vietnamese food.”

A graduate and postgraduate in Languages from Ulster University, Thana says she
launched Whoosh with the aim “to share a love of food, our culture and the stories
behind every recipe and every dish we cook”.

“Our belief is in fresh, delicious food that’s cooked with love and really makes a
difference, keeping consumers healthy, happy and satisfied. Over the years, we
gradually won the hearts and appetites of so many foodies here,” she adds.
2022 marked the launch of Whoosh’s own range of instant rice noodle pots that can
be eaten everywhere in a matter of minutes for a nourishing and flavoursome meal.
“The noodles are authentic, three-minute meals that have been handcrafted with
care, using only the best quality and purest ingredients,” continues Thana.

She believes in “eating healthy, eating happy, eating together”. “Our mission is still to
bring people together through food – at work, at home, or anywhere in between.”

As the festive season approaches, there’s one gift that always delights – the promise of great food, fine wine and warm hospitality. At Clandeboye Lodge (Bangor, County Down) the Coq & Bull brasserie offers just that, proudly Taste of Ulster accredited and dedicated to celebrating the very best of Northern Ireland’s local and seasonal produce.

For those seeking the perfect present, the Coq & Bull meal for two gift voucher is a thoughtful choice. It includes a three-course à la carte meal and a bottle of wine for two – the perfect gift that brings people together over good, honest food!

Recognised for its warm welcome, talented chefs and exceptional service, the Coq & Bull is a renowned brasserie where the atmosphere shifts seamlessly from relaxed and light-filled by day to intimate and inviting by night. Head Chef Ian Lyttle and his team are passionate about crafting good, honest food using the finest local ingredients.

And this Christmas, there’s even more reason to share the joy. Spend £100 on Clandeboye Lodge gift vouchers and receive a £10 voucher for yourself! Offer valid until 19^th December 2025. T&Cs apply.

Discover the full range of Clandeboye Lodge gift vouchers, and give a gift they’ll truly look forward to.

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.