Food Episodes

Irish Stew wraps its Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands Series in Drumshanbo, the Co. Leitrim town rewriting the rural renewal playbook. What began as a desperate effort to save a shuttered jam factory has become one of Ireland's most remarkable community-led success stories. At The Food Hub in Drumshanbo, cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee hear from Cllr Enda McGloin and onsite manager Fergal McPartland how a voluntary local committee refused to let the abandoned jam factory slip a...

Irish Stew’s latest “Off the Beaten Craic” adventure in County Leitrim discovers three new ways to slow down, tune in, and taste this corner of Ireland, through food, forest, and a gentle spin along the Jackalope Trail. First, we meet Malaysian‑born chef and restaurateur Sham Hanifa. At age 20 he answered an ad to work in Ireland, arriving in Carrick‑on‑Shannon jet‑lagged and short on money, but today he anchors the local food scene with The Cottage, My Kitchen, and Buffalo Boy, blending Iris...

Taste Ireland…more specifically, taste the Hidden Heartlands of the Irish Midlands through a completely original cuisine designed around the fresh local produce from surrounding farms, on offer at Athlone’s Michelin Bib Gourmand culinary destination, Thyme Restaurant. Some but not all of the exceptional plates we encountered at Thyme Restaurant in Athlone Chef John Coffey conjures up his ever-evolving menu around the vegetables local organic farmer Shannon is pulling or plucking from her nea...

Join us in the first leg of our “Irish Stew Gets Lost in Belfast Road Trip” in the vibrant Cathedral Quarter at its prime culinary destination Waterman House as we explore the recipe for restaurant success with Chef and Founder Niall McKenna. Niall dishes on his culinary journey from West Belfast, training under influential chefs like Paul Rankin, the evolution of his multiple restaurant ventures including James St. and Hadskis, and the buzz surrounding his Waterman House Cookery School. For Ni...

Our 49th episode features one of our most global of guests–Deirdre Ryan, a world class athlete who competed for Ireland on the global stage and who is now raising the bar for Irish food. Born in County Dublin, Deirdre studied business and Italian, then worked, studied and trained in Milan. To train and work in Germany, she learned to speak German and she’d go on to work in Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK before returning to Ireland full time. Along the way, she soared to new heights rolling b...