Episode 2 of Beár Bia is live – a podcast celebrating the unison of Irish food & drink. This episode is a showcase of the producers at Bord Bia bloom festival
Dee Laffan and Oisin Davis are on a mission to highlight the finest Irish food & drink pairings through their brand new podcast “Beár Bia.” Translated to English as Food Bar, Beár Bia’s key focus is that local foods taste best when enjoyed with local drinks and Ireland is no exception. Furthermore, pairing our native food native food & drinks is a vital means to develop our Irish culinary culture.
It can be accessed on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
How does Beár Bia work?
Each episode will have a different focus – whether it be pairings from a particular county, from an event, a bar or restaurant, a specific ingredient or cooking method, or themed around a food or drink brand. We invite Irish food & drink producers for a round-the-table, fun-filled tasting, and discussion. Brewers chatting with cheesemakers, distillers hanging out with chefs, etc – all of it recorded, filmed & photographed for the podcast.
For our second episode, we were kindly granted access to the huge array of different Irish food & drinks producers that were at the Bord Bia Bloom festival in Phoenix Park last month. Our goal was to look at how we could celebrate pairing some of the best Irish drinks there with Irish food products but in their most simple state. That way we could demonstrate that even something as easy to prepare as an Irish cheese on a cracker could taste amazing alongside an Irish beer.
The producers and their brands we worked with for the special Bord Bia Bloom episode were:
– Ann Rudden of Aine’s Chocolates of Cavan whose chocolates we paired with county Galway’s Micil Distillery‘s Irish Cream Liqueur. Its founder Pádraic Ó’Griallais joined us.
– Dennis Dempsey of Kinsale Mead in Cork shared some of his Wild Atlantic Mead to pair with Birgitta Hedin-Curtin’s wild smoked salmon from the Burren Smokehouse in Clare.
– Caitriona Keavney from Cooleeney Farm in Tipperary joined us and we paired some of their smoked brie with the dark mild beer from David Walsh Kemmis’ Ballykilcavan Brewery in Laois.
Each pairing was individually recorded at the Bord Bia Bloom festival. Between them all we covered what is most likely Ireland’s oldest food & drink combo, an ideal starter style pairing and a decadent Irish dessert.
The first season of Beár Bia will feature 12 episodes and will be broadcast fortnightly.
About the hosts….
Dee Laffan is a food journalist and editor with over 15 years of experience. Currently, she is writing for TheTaste.ie, Irish Country Living in the Farmers Journal, and Irish Country Magazine. Dee is also the co-founder and editor of Scoop: Irish Food Stories, an annual Irish food magazine, which is published by Nine Bean Rows Books.
Dee is a broadcaster and was co-host of the Spice Bags Podcast from 2020-2023 when it finished. The podcast won Best Food Podcast twice in the Irish Food Writing Awards in 2021 and 2023.
Dee describes herself as a professional eater, and when she’s not doing that you’ll find her on stage at festivals and events across the country, talking about food. She’s a proud Irish Food Writers’ Guild member and a Blas na hÉireann judge (Irish Food Awards). Oisín Davis is an award winning cocktail creator, spirits columnist and best selling author of his debut book,”Irish Kitchen Cocktails.” Through his company Great Irish Beverages, he has run nationwide drinks festivals, worked all around the world educating and marketing for Irish whiskey and manages publicity for some of Ireland’s most prestigious spirit brands.
He has a monthly award winning spirits column in Food & Wine Magazine, is a regular speaker at international bar and spirits shows and previously wrote a food column in The Irish Times for five years.
With thanks to…
The Beár Bia podcast has been made possible with very kind support from Bord Bia.
Huge thanks to everyone at Bord Bia Bloom and all the food & drinks producers we worked with for this episode.
Stay up to date with us on https://www.instagram.com/bearbiapodcast/
For more info please email oisin@greatirishbeverages.com or deelaffan@gmail.com
