My, how the weather has changed! I’m writing this on a dull and rainy October afternoon. People are still saying it’s autumn..but I’m going to be overzealous and go with winter. The sky that you would associate with winter is currently overhead; you know the kind..when despite how early it is in the day, it looks like its pushing on 7pm. I’m observing and sharing the current weather with you as when I attended these events (not too long ago!) there was no need for a jacket and the weather was pretty spectacular.
A few weeks ago was blog award season. I found out I was a shortlisted for the Food & Drink blog category for the Image Blog Awards. Although I didn’t win, I was in the final six with five other hugely talented bloggers. The gals over at Image said they were inundated with entries so it all felt both surreal and fantastic to make it as a finalist! The evening itself was great. The awards were held at Dylan McGrath’s Fade Street Social and we had plenty of prosecco, wine and delicious food for the night. I don’t think I even tried half the food, I did my best to taste everything and photographed as much as I could. I had the chance to meet some lovely people, brought my Mother as my date and received a cute little gift bag when everything was done and dusted!
Deep fried olives
Duck samosas
Calamari
More or less a week later was the Blog Awards Ireland. I was shortlisted in the lifestyle category, then became a finalist! More wonderful news. I was a judge for the Blog Awards Ireland last year, so it was great to be a finalist based on all the elements I looked for in blogs around the country myself. I couldn’t attend as I was already going to a V.I.S. (very important sixtieth!) but I display the badge proudly on the blog..right up there on the right. It gives the page a nice pop of colour, if I do say so myself.
In between the blog awards, Emily, Yelp Dublin’s community manager invited me to the Yelp event ‘Yelp Goes Up Market’. The event was a collaboration between Yelp and Irish Food Markets (a team of amazing and genuinely lovely people!) held at the Canal Boat Restaurant on Mespil road.
The event was market food with a silver service twist. We were presented with a menu which had every kind of food imaginable, which would be whipped up fresh for us at the market stalls outside. Any kind of food I desired was at my fingertips! Which made it all the more difficult to order. Burgers? Burritos? Paella? Chinese? Sushi? Indian? BBQ? Schnitzel? What did I want!?
I settled on Pad Thai from Kanum, which was delicious. The box was heaving and had a bit of weight to it, definitely a good portion size. It was very, very heavy on peanuts, which I really enjoyed and the chopped chilli and lime wedge were a nice touch. It went down well with the couple of glasses of red.
To my great surprise, I ended up sitting beside Joanne, a lovely lady with a lot of personality who also happens to be the creator of the food blog Stitch and Bear. We follow each other on Twitter and I have used her reviews as reference in the past, so it was great to put a face to the name.
Joanne ordered a duck bento box. Picture perfect!
As we ate, drank and went crazy on social media, we enjoyed live jazz by Etienne Music. I absolutely loved the rendition of 16 tons.
We were snapped chatting away by the Yelp team. I might not look impressed..but I was!
Dessert was cupcakes! The most perfectly formed cupcakes I have ever seen. Apparently Michael D. Higgins is a fan. I had the vanilla oreo cupcake, naturally.
A boozy lunch, on a boat..with cupcakes, great company and the sun shining overhead. A fantastic Yelp event..thanks to Emily for the invite.
I’ve had some great experiences and opportunities for the blog over the last few months, which is all thanks to you guys. Those of you who follow me and come back to read more, I wouldn’t get these opportunities if it wasn’t for you. Thank you for all your support, and have a fantastic weekend!
For more Yelp events, click here.
Click here for the Fade Street Social website.
Image.ie Blog Awards
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