Connemara Smokehouse win at IFWG Awards Food Oscars

IFWG (Irish Food Writers’ Guild Award) Food Awards celebrate indigenous food producers and organisations who create, make and share great Irish produce and products while helping to maintain Ireland’s outstanding international reputation in food and drink. New to these awards this year is a Community Food Award, which highlights an organisation or individual working with food that has embraced an ethos of social responsibility to an exemplary level.

The 2018 IFWG Food Award winner:

Food Award: Connemara Smokehouse Smoked Mackerel, Co. Galway

Connemara Smokehouse is one of the oldest smokehouses in the west of Ireland and has been run by the Roberts family since 1979.

Today, second-generation smoker Graham Roberts and his wife Saoirse personally manage each aspect of the business, from sourcing the highest-quality Irish fish to hand filleting, dry salting, seasoning, hot- and cold-smoking and finally delivering from one of the most remote and beautiful parts of Connemara to customers around the world.

It is their hot-smoked mackerel that the Irish Food Writers’ Guild selected for one of this year’s awards, a humble and plentiful local fish that is elevated to a fine delicacy through meticulous sourcing and sensitive smoking. The result is a superb smoked mackerel with a succulent, generous flesh and sweet, delicately smoked flavour.