Foodies Fight Back with Lucinda
Thursday 15 July 2021
THE BILINGUAL CAFE
POTA is a new bilingual cafe in the heart of the Connemara Gaeltacht which Cork chef patron Diarmuid Ó Mathúna had been waiting 12 months to launch.
Ever since I ran it as a pop-up in Cork in 2018, I’d been looking for a permanent home for POTA. When this space came up in Baile na hAbhann, next to TG4 in Galway, it looked like all of the stars were aligning. Galway 2020 was in full swing, the Oireachtas (a massive celebration of all things Gaeilge) was coming that autumn — we were looking forward to a great year. Then everything changed.”
Diarmuid move to Galway anyway, thinking things would go back to normal and he’d be able to launch the cafe a little later in the summer. “On the sage advice of industry colleagues, we held off on opening. We were very lucky that the landlords were so understanding. They knew that we wanted to be here for the long haul and that the best way to make that happen was to wait for the right time to start.”
Wanting to do something with the space and having made contact with some amazing small food producers, he set up a branch of NeighbourFood, the online market. “As someone who grew up in hospitality, the opportunity just to meet customers once a week and talk to them about food kept me sane.”
lucindaosullivan.com
First Published In The Sunday Independent