Irish Country Living’s Janine Kennedy was the big winner at the Irish Food Writing Awards in the RDS on Thursday night, winning the Food Writing Award.

The accolade was judged by Deborah Reid and sponsored by Bord Bia.

Over 100 award finalists and guests attended from throughout the island of Ireland, competing for the 21 awards on offer covering Irish food and drink journalism, cookbooks, feature writing, blogging, podcasting, photography and Instagram/TikTok.

The awards were attended by some international judges, including ITV drinks journalist Andy Clarke; eco-chef, writer and BBC Saturday Kitchen regular Tom Hunt; and Hello Magazine’s Charlotte Pike, former chair of the UK Guild of Food Writers.

Other judges included Xanthe Clay, Fiona Beckett, Colman Andrews and Tim Hayward.

Honour

Congratulating all of the winners, awards founder and journalist Suzanne Campbell said they were “delighted and gratified” by the number of entries received this year.

“It always an honour and a pleasure to work with our international judges and Irish food and drink sponsor companies. We could not do this without their support.

“When Paul O’Connor and I were inspired to set up the awards, having seen how vital food writing was during COVID, and the hard work of the food and drink community continues to educate, entertain and encourage the very best in hospitality and food production.”

Meanwhile, Dee Laffan was also nominated in the food writing category for her work profiling Irish food producers in Irish Country Living and Irish Country Magazine as was picture editor with the Irish Farmers Journal Philip Doyle in the food photography (professional category).

The Irish Food Writing Awards were established to recognise and celebrate the high quality of food and drink writing from throughout the island of Ireland, across print, broadcast and online.

In all categories, entries were accepted from the nominees themselves or by a third party and were open to writers, journalists, bloggers and photographers.