Lifetime achievement award for Nenagh couple

Nenagh shopkeepers Peter and Mary Ward have been honoured for their roles in promoting Irish food, winning a Lifetime Achievement Award in a highly prestigious competition.

The proprietors of the Country Choice shop in Kenyon Street were chosen by Ireland’s top food writers for their Guild Food Awards for 2024, announced last week.

The Guild said Peter and Mary “have been passionate champions of local food since they opened Country Choice in 1982, selling the best and most natural ingredients they can source.”

Their highly popular shop, with its superb delicatessen and coffee bar, has won multiple awards over the past four decades and put Nenagh on the map as a food lover’s paradise.

Country Choice has for years been a prime visitor attraction because of its exquisite range of artisan foods and for the passion and warm welcome the owners extend to their customers.

In bestowing on them the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Irish Food Writers Guild said Peter and Mary are members of a diverse group that represent the very best of Ireland’s growing network of food and drink producers.

With just eight prestigious awards presented, the Nenagh couple were one of a select few who picked up a gong at an awards gala in Dublin last week.

“A country grocer,” was how American food writer Colman Andrews described Peter Ward in his James Beard Award-winning, ‘The Country Cooking of Ireland’, the Guild pointed out.

The Guild noted Peter’s many roles in promoting Irish food, and as someone who with Mary, has won many awards with Country Choice over the decades.

From their shop they did everything from serving pots of tea to customers to weighing out slabs of local cheddar. They had promoted Irish food all over the world, cooking for dignitaries in cities from Capetown and Alicante; addressing government panels on food regulation policies and distributing and selling the best of Irish and imported foods.

Co Meath native Peter was described as “a shopkeeper to his fingertips”, and was partnered by Nenagh native, Mary, both of whom were involved in the slow food movement for many years.

The Guild noted that “the couple have been passionate champions of local food since they opened Country Choice in 1982”.

It took time before small producers were properly acknowledged and celebrated, but the Wards could see the bounty that surrounded them in the farmlands around Nenagh, the award organisers said.

It was at agriculture shows that Peter and Mary discovered people to supply foods to their the award winning shop. “If you went to these shows, you could get an endless supply of ducks, geese, Madeira cakes, apple tarts, jam, tomatoes and Beauty of Bath apples. That was the bedrock of our business at the time,” Peter once recalled.

The Guild noted that Peter was one of the great communicators of Irish food, making the most of every platform available, be it stage, radio, television or his popular social media posts doing tastings with Mary.

The judges said the Nenagh couple never shied away from emphasising that everyone in their community has their own role to play to building a successful and distinctive Irish food sector, be it the butcher, the baker and the artisan. They had realised that cheap did not equal value.

Reacting to the win, Peter Ward declared: “We were bowled over to be selected for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild of Irish Food Writers.”

He said the chair of the Guild, Caroline Hennessy had “penned a lovely citation that had both humbled and embarrassed us at the same time.”

Mr Ward said it was marvellous to receive such an award at a time when he and his wife  were “in the sunset years of a rollercoaster life in food and food production.”

“We were very grateful to have been selected by an eminent panel of great food writers.”

OTHER WINNERS

Other award winners included the Carlingford Oyster Company in Co Louth; Regan Organic Farm who produce organic chickens in Co Wexford; The Roll It Pastry company in Co Meath; Valentia Island Vermount in County Kerry; Conor Spacey, FoodSpace, Co Dublin; Rare Ruminare, Co Sligo, and Cork Urban Soil Project in Co Cork.

Speaking at the gala event in Dublin, Caroline Hennessy, said the awards were a celebration to shine a light on the exemplars of the country’s thriving, world-class artisan food and drink industry.

The awards, now in their 31st year, spotlight excellence and distinguishable quality in Irish produce and its committed creators. Sustainability is a consistent thread and numerous family businesses have been recognised over three decades, not only for their excellent produce and practices, but also for the lasting and enduring legacy they are creating for current and future generations.