...there's both eatin' and drinkin' in it
Turn left at the green balloons…
Those were the directions given to the taxi driver. It was just as well he said – his sat nav wanted to send him elsewhere, but the balloons clearly marked the location in Comber, Co. Down, of Mash Direct, where, earlier this month, the great and the good of Comber, Belfast and beyond gathered to celebrate ten years of turning good potatoes into better business.
Balloons mark the Mash Direct birthday spot
The invitation was for lunch with Neven Maguire at the Aviva Stadium.
I pictured myself and a capacity stadium crowd being fed personally by Neven, and it seemed like that might be a stretch – even for one of Ireland’s best loved chefs and quite possibly the nicest man in the Irish food business. As it turns out, the crowd was rather smaller – more like 15 than 50,000 – and (get me!) we were lunching in the intimate surrounds of a corporate box, with the breadth of the Aviva as a backdrop, and Mr. Maguire for company (as my sister later put it, I had gone from nought to Neven, and in only five (blogging) years too; jammy was the other description that sprang to mind, which was exactly how it felt to have homemade jammie dodgers à la Neven round off the meal).
A display of spuds lined the corporate corridors at the Aviva Stadium:
I guess somebody told ’em I was on my way through… (and yes, before you ask, there were spuds – in potato gratin form – on Neven’s menu too)
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