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)
Whaddya Sayin’?