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I will admit that when I accepted a last minute invite to a dining in the dark event, I did so with a certain degree of trepidation. I am not exactly known as an adventurous eater. While I have certainly branched out over the last few years I am still a bit funny about food textures and flavours and generally I like to know exactly what I'm eating in case someone tries to sneak in one of the pesky foods I dont like. The other concerns I would have would be around my vegetarianism and gluten intolerance. If I accidentally eat wheat I would become quite sick and this involves one of three things none of which is delightful for my other dining companions as it will either involve me being locked in a bathroom or belching/ farting my way through the remainder of the meal. While eating meat is very unlikely to have same effect I do feel a bit ill thinking about eating it. Normally all of these things coupled with my general dislike of publicly making a fuss  ( by making my food iss...

I will be the first to tell you that I don't really do New Years Eve. I don't wish to mark it or celebrate it in any fashion and if it was left entirely up to me then I would probably sit in watching non festive tv shows and be in bed asleep before the countdown. It's one of those nights that has almost always been a bit of let down. Something that promises to be something more than it is. However my boyfriend lies on the opposite end of the scale and he dreads the thought of sitting in most on this particular night and so we find ourselves compromising. After last year where I worked until after 9 and came  home and got straight into bed, I felt this year I could make a bit more of an effort. I headed out at 8pm suitably dolled up and we caught an hour of a gig in Geoffs before going to dinner in our favourite restaurant, Funnily enough our first time in MOMO was exactly two years ago on New Years Eve so it felt only fitting that we return on this night. On our first v...

Sourdough bread is one of those things I discovered rather late in life. In time before I discovered my gluten intolerance I could eat any bread I chose and the name sourdough conjured up an unpleasant taste in my mouth so naturally I never bothered to taste it and see if my assumptions were correct. Fast forward to about three years ago when I occasionally dabbled in spelt bread but couldn't stomach regular bread and my sister told me I should be okay to eat sourdough pizza because the process involved in making sourdough kills a lot of the gluten. This was terribly exciting news plus it was delicious pizza and then for the first time ever I began to look out  for Sourdough breads. Luckily for me it was around this time the real bread movement began to gain popularity and said breads weren't actually too difficult to find. Waterford is not a bad old spot for decent food and we are very lucky to have the likes of Ardkeen stores selling artisan foods you can't get elsewh...

I can still remember the first time I had set foot in Momo Restaurant. To be fair it would be worrying if I couldn't given that they have only been open just over a year now. Anyway, I digress, it was New Years Eve and myself and my boyfriend were looking to do something low key to mark the occasion. I am happy to stay in and wear pyjamas and be in bed before the New Year has even been rung in but my lovely boyfriend would like to be at some great party making new memories to carry him in to the year ahead. As a compromise we said we could join another couple in going to Momo for food and music and then have a few drinks in a bar after. At that point I had heard quite a bit about Momo and had been repeatedly saying we must go in and try it. They had only been open a few weeks but there had been considerable buzz about the restaurant and everything I had seen and heard had piqued my interest so I was only delighted to have an excuse to finally try it out. As it happened we ha...

Taking advantage of a Sunday off in November, myself and the boyfriend decided to go for a nice stroll through town in search of food and to take a look at Winterval, I had somehow managed to forget that while it all looks pretty that Winterval is pretty much catering for families and the food stalls don't have a whole lot to offer someone on as strict a diet as myself. This would probably be quite a sad story if the first stall we had encountered on our walk to town had not been Slice Woodfire Pizza. When I first met John Keane, he was not actually making pizza but singing his own songs at an open mic night and doing a pretty great job of it might I add. It seems he his a man of many talents though and he is also excellent at making woodfire pizza. He started serving these to the general public over the summer in the New Street Gardens and has since branched out and gotten his own mobile trailer so he can set up anywhere in town and make his pizzas. The last few weeks he h...

With a not exactly overflowing social calendar at the moment, I have been telling the boyfriend we can go eat out some time soon. He was in the mood for pizza but there are two problems with pizza, one being that I always eat it much too quickly so not exactly a lengthy romantic meal out and the second is that I can't eat wheat. I should probably stress that the second bit is usually the most troubling for me, as you can imagine it some what limits my pizza eating capabilities. We usually head to a Milanos whenever we are in a city with one as its a chain that does a great gluten free pizza but sadly Waterford does not have one. I have eaten out in an Italian restaurant here that does a pretty decent gluten free pizza but they only make the bases on demand so you have to give them a days notice if you are going to be ordering one and quite frankly I don't always know that far in advance that I want pizza.  Burzza Restaurant opened in Waterford less than a year ago and caugh...

You may have seen my previous blog posts on traumatic experiences in French Restaurants. Okay maybe no traumatic per se but revolving around me paying a ludicrous amount of money for the only vegetarian option available and then finding it to be a lot less than delicious. Before you pull up a chair and think that you are about to see me eat my own hat ,figuratively speaking, I am not. I still believe the majority of French restaurants are not particularly vegetarian friendly but it is unfair to lump them in together. One exception to this rule is L'Atmosphere on Henrietta Street in Waterford. Now chances are they are not the only restaurant that happens to both cater to vegetarians and also not spit in my food simply because I enquired about vegetarian options but in my dining experience thus far they are the first that I can come away and say positive things about. It was one of those places I found somewhat intimidating and so had never so much as peeped inside the doo...

Myself and Stephen were up in Dublin for two nights and managed to do surprisingly little with our time. We got back last night but I am only getting around to blogging today because I was too tired and full of caffeine to write anything before now. We had gone up to see Walworth Farce because Stephen had gotten us tickets (See previous blog post for more on that) but it worked out a bit more expensive and stressful than planned trying to get there. Let's just say I will be on a very tight budget for the next few weeks and I am no longer on speaking terms with google maps. I had training all day Thursday and we were trying to work out how to get up in time for the play and it was a bit of a tussle but we made it work in the end. We had the fastest and messiest pizza ever (messy because I was eating it with 5 minutes to spare before we ran to the theatre) in Milanos, chosen because their pizza is delicious, they offer gluten free and it was en route to the Olympia. After the pla...

So here I am at the grand old age of 32 ( but looking 25 if you ask my house mate and she's studying psychology so she's pretty smart) and last night was the very first time in my adult life that I had gone for dinner with my mum and my sister. I live less than an hours drive from them and I'm home (Clonmel) once a week so really there's no reason we shouldn't have done this before. Actually that's not true, there's a very good reason and that reason would be me. For as long as I can remember I was a fussy eater. I liked very few things and I was extremely particular about how I ate them. The black and white photo is me eating jam, it was for an ad I did as a kid and they let me eat the whole jar so it's safe to say that jam made it on to the list but a whole host of other foods didn't. I was incredibly awkward and drove my parents to distraction trying to think of ways to get me to eat and maybe expand my diet a little. I would go to great lengt...

I don't really like to celebrate New Years eve but my boyfriend does so as a compromise we decided to go to Momo, a new restaurant in town, that was doing an eats and beats night for New Years, with friends of Stephens.  I spent the week telling people I going to a bites and bubbles event in Momo because I had convinced myself that's what it was called so it might be worth noting as a possible name for next years one. After working a full day New Years Eve, I wasn't really in the form for a night on the town and I might have come close to having a little nap in my supersoft dressing gown. Instead I motivated myself with the thought of food and got myself out the door looking reasonably presentable. I have never actually been out in Waterford city for New Years because in my years living here I have mostly been pretending that it's just another night and not waking up in a heap on New Years day so I really didn't know how bad town would be and I was a little worr...

It feels a little like I have been playing a hermit lately because I haven't had any escapades to blog about. Last night I set out to rectify that. Okay so I didn't, last night I had genuine plans so I actually left the apartment. My boyfriend made us a last minute reservation for the newly opened Burzza on John street, a place I'd been hoping to try since I saw their really cool menu being shared on Facebook. It's nice to see new places opening and it's also cool that for the first time in my life I am actually going out and eating in them. As it was their opening night, the gluten free options are still being worked on but I did manage to get myself a lovely falafel burger with fries and tried not to look on jealously as everyone around me got delicious looking pizza. I am told they are working on a gluten free one and when that happens, I am going to get so fat ( okay so probably not but I will be the first in line to try it)  After dinner we headed d...

Last night my boyfriend and I went for a meal in a very nice French restaurant, just like grown ups. well we were more like amateur grown ups, sitting down to eat at 6 to ensure we got the early bird menu and proffering two vouchers that covered the exact cost of our meal ( my house mate had been given them from work when he didn't attend their Christmas party and generously donated them to me) so In reality I felt a bit like a student because I couldn't afford to eat at this restaurant at a regular time or without the voucher (not after this weeks fruit buying mania). The other truth that struck me was that I actually had more money as a student ( working part time) even if I did hate the job that put me through college.  anyway I had been putting off using the donated vouchers for as long as possible  because my last encounter with French food had me feeling the experience would more of an endurance than a treat.  It's no secret that I'm a picky eater s...