Amsterdam froze over

I found this photo today amongst the millions that we took on one of our food adventures...we went to Amsterdam in February and it was damn freezing. The first evening we were there we came accross a few frozen over canals and followed these guys down onto the ice for a skate around. The locals were extatic, running down from their apartments when they saw us on the ice. They told us that it hadnt happened in 12 years. The next day the ice melted.

Lucky us

Whirly Gurdy Gurdy Gurdy

Introducing....DublinArtsFest

This is the start of something big. Dublin Arts Festival, the brainchild of those great folk at EarDrumBuzz is gonna be rolling out the red carpet for the first time on Sun August 23rd on meeting house square in Temple Bar. Free in during the day for the family event - music, circus, face painting, food followed by THE WHIRLY GIG - dj Cheeba, Photosonic Orchestra, Noise Control, The Amazing Few, Botheads, Mandolin Man, Robotnik.
Great to see the square being put to good use. That stage doesnt get used nearly half as much as it should. We'll be there serving up the nosh along with The Queens Of Neon, Hicks, Cake Cafe and The Winding Stair(looking forward to that!)
A proper party for Dublin in Temple Bar.

Festival Food Part III - knockanstockan

Knockanstockan we love you.
First up lets hear it for the fact that posibbly one of the best festivals of the summer is in fact a voluntarily run festival....I think only the security and the guys doing the clean up get paid. So no, not even the organisers earn a crust out of it. I'll tell ya theres a few large promoters in this country who could definately do with taking a leaf out of their book.

You sometimes get a bit disheartened working at big festivals, especially when the weather's not on your side, your tent is blowing away, the electricity keeps cutting out and someone has just tried to steal your sign and you kinda wonder....why are we doing this again? Knockanstockan reminded us why we love what we do. Small crowd of genuine people, beautiful setting, real heart and effort gone into the production and great music. Definate highlight was the north strand kontra band and captain magic jammin at 4am in the production barn. Definate lowlight was being denied a swim in the lake on saturday, but hey, its kind of understandable. Safety first.
We were really gaggin for that swim though.

Backbones

Have we ever told you how great our staff are??

Festival Food Part II - Street Performers

Possibly Ireland's best festival at the moment for sheer entertainment value the Street Performance World Championships is an absolute winner. From 20,000 people attending in Dublin three years ago to 120,000 in Cork and Dublin this year...what can we say. The concept is so simple, the performers perform and you pay what you think they deserve. No strings attached, no obligations, no entry fees, no mud, no messiness just good clean fun. And they are seriously the BEST street performers in the world.

This is where we started out last year. The lads gave us our first shot at a stall without even knowing what kind of food we do (thanks for the blind faith Conor and Mark). This year we went down to Cork with them, which was great... but Dublin was mayhem. Feckin mayhem! Every round at the after party was a double and a shot - a small example of how mad the weekend was.
Bring on next year

Festival Food part I - Life

my god did the sun shine... And doesnt everyone look so much more attractive when they have less clothes on. Oh dont they just! What a great weekend.
Just as we were all getting that little bit too kranky after 6 hours of cleanup in the 'holyshititsactuallyreallyhot' irish sun a drenched french chick comes running up to us saying that the lake was open. Thank the lord Jesus Christ. We spent those last few hours of sunlight on monday swimming in the most amazing setting as workers and crew panned out on the grass beside the jetty - a perfect end to a long weekend.
It was great to see some new food stalls on the scene and some old faces too. Is the fact that none of us made that much money a sign of the times? Who knows, we'll have to wait and see how the next few festivals pan out.

Life is just around the corner

Countdown to LIFE FESTIVAL.....we've got our hats on and cant wait to lash out the festival food. Mr weatherman says the sun is gonna shine. woop woop


Last year was the first festival we ever did. EVER

Hot Diggity....

mmm I'll have two please

Hector, Donal and Stefano put on a festival in their House. There was genius oozing out of the paintwork.
Check it out: http://weareanexhibition.com/

"SHOWCASES, VIDEO, INSTALATIONS, ACOUSTIC ALLIENATION & INTERNATIONAL COOKING FOR DRIFTERS"

Flea Food

Flea market day was kicking once again
Best falafel in town! One girl said she had come all the way down just to get a falafel....but we had sold out by the time she got here. So she cried. Not really. But that would have been impressive.






















































Bob makes waffles. He's from Belgium.

Rags Fags and Maggotts

We were asked to go down and dish up some scran at the NCAD RAG WEEK last week. Lovely weather and lovely people.
Its great to have so much creativity going on around you. I would have loved to have had the freedom around campus that NCAD students have. They throw a shindig in the square, everyone is allowed to bring their own drink and then they all clean up afterwards!! respect.

































































Props to the pair of pirates who came over asking for leftovers.... no sorry, asking for 'anything that had dropped on the ground that we wouldnt be selling'.









Being a bleedin Eye-Talian Luca has never witnessed an Iron Stomach Competition before....
the live crickets and maggotts in round three definitely upped the anti!





























Barbequed bananas with chocolate made by some of the NCAD boys

Ciao Chow

Let us introduce ourselves….we are Aisling & Luca

La Bella Pizzella was born out of a road trip to West Cork and a meeting in the Dice Bar a week later…It progressed through days spent in a kitchen in phibsborough, a summer of festivals in Ireland and a winter of culinary adventures around the globe.

We love what we do.

Keep watching for summer adventures, festival tales, food food and more food

yum