Food as magical as the backward flowing river

Haydn Shaughnessy embarks on a tour of the south-west in pursuit of foods that excite and surprise the taste buds

On the drive from Kenmare via the coast road back into Co Cork there is a lake that rests on a slope, defying gravity. The water hangs at a 45 degree angle on the bare hill.

On the back road from Bandon to Kinsale the view ahead suggests, as it flows downstream, that somehow the river has contrived to go upwards reaching an elevated plateau, a watery table mountain, a mile or two in the distance.

These are the peculiar effects of summer light on the south-west's intimate hills.

So, you ask of this sloping lakeland and climbing water, what else have you got that will surprise us?

Christmas cake, is the answer. Made with pork. Tomato jam, as well. Carrot in the marmalade. A restaurant where nobody sits down.

The region's established gourmet reputation is already being superseded with new ideas, even as it consolidates.Bandon, long neglected, now aspires to be a gateway to this world.

Urru, the new gourmet store on MacSwiney Quay, has joined Martin Carey's, the butcher in South Main Street; twin indicators to food happenings along the coast.

There is a certain pleasure in discussing with Martin the pork handle, a traditional cut lost now to most of us. It takes two hours to roast, far too long for busy lives.

Martin hangs his beef for three weeks, but we took seconds to finish it off. The boerwurst are unusually unlike sausages. They taste of a dry day. A different meat experience, altogether.

Around the corner from Urru is An Tobarain, a health food shop that can guide allergy sufferers and people on special diets on how to pass their holiday in gourmet comfort.

For snacking on the trip, pick up hemp bread or Baking Emporium's spelt crackers from owner Mary Wedel.

In Clonakilty, chefs Karen Austen and Con McLoughlin have given up the formerly magnetic Lettercollum House to set up their Kitchen Project.

Their new concept goes like this. Every morning pull the vegetables, herbs and salads from the organic garden at home, source the best local meats, drive down to the retail shop, which has its own open plan kitchen, and start creating gourmet meals, high quality pastries and breads, non-stop, until all the produce is used. Karen also makes the tangy tomato jam, and the orange and carrot marmalade.

Customers order their gourmet meal based on whatever ingredients are available. There are no limits other than what the morning and local producers provide. The Kitchen Project offers the ultimate in fresh, and the definition of invention. And at the end of the day Karen and Con, like their customers, get to sit down with a glass of wine.

Sonia Bower met us in Roscarbery and we sat under the hot sun eating Jamaican pickles on the Celtic Ross terrace, using nachos to scoop the aubergines and oil. She makes garlic taste like pepper.

Her cloves melt on the tongue and speak Mexican. She opens her own workshop to the public in October.

In the meantime, you can catch her at Clonakilty, Bantry, Skibbereen and Farmleigh, Dublin, markets.

From Roscarbery the temptation is to divert to Union Hall to visit the smokery there, but we had to fit our tour into one day and Sally Barnes at the Woodcock Smokery in Castletownshend had agreed to wait in for us. The fat summer herrings were ready to go into the smoking oven.

The tuna was running low in the stockroom. Sally arrived back from a trip to "Skib" and treated us to an hour of her wisdom in the smoking trade.

The tendency with farmed, smoked salmon is to smoke for taste and rely on refrigeration to provide shelf life.

Sally cures the salmon by rubbing salt on to the skin, drawing out water, a catalyst for dangerous bacteria, simultaneously establishing a controlled microbial environment on the surface of the fish which then gets half a day or more purification from the esters in beech and oak smoke.

My oldest son won't eat smoked salmon normally. What a life! He devoured this strong and firm, succulent flesh, while I put Sally's smoked tuna into a salad strong on whole sprigs of pungent parsley, rocket leaves and long cuts of cucumber. The acidity caused by curing teases the edge of the tongue for a while after the fish has gone, an early reminder that here is an expert artisan.

Another stalwart of the region's reputation for great food is Jeffa Gill at Durrus.

The road from Sally to Jeffa passes Ballydehob and winds through gently sloping pasture into the crags around Bantry. Never wide, the hillside road narrows to a single track and a thousand bumps on the way to Coomkeen.

Jeffa's raw milk cheese won the best Irish Cheese award in the British Taste awards in 2003 and appears on the menus of top Manhattan restaurants.

The Sheep's Head Way passes the border of her small farm and walkers can drop in to buy and discuss modern diets and the craft of balancing the bacterial world in a cheese round.

She began producing when coastal Ireland was populated by small herds of seven to a dozen cows and farmers made their living out of diversity.

The cheese on a hot day was perfect. To enjoy it this good it needs to be taken from the fridge three or four hours before eating.

Time was running out for us, but we had two more calls to make. A quick ride back to Roscarbery and we found, finally, the fruit cake made from pork.

Avril and Willie Allshire were respectively a secretary and a printer until they took over Caherbeg farm 10 years ago.

They bought their first pigs in 1997 and made their first meats only four years ago. Last year they won four British awards. Caherbeg's free range pork is dark in colour, almost as dark as beef. But we were there for the cake. Rich fruit, sandy cinnamon, and pork. An unusual and comforting combination.

Apart from recreating the medieval pork cake (in the old days there were no eggs for cake-making at Christmas, Avril explains, but every farm would have killed a pig, so . . . ), she grows grapes and cultivates a lemon tree.

Having dwelled by the lemon tree at Caherbeg we missed Eithne Ní Dhraighneain, an ex-teacher who runs Sláinte, a new cake and quiche producer in Ballinascarthy. The next day we hooked up in the new park in Bandon and discussed what might become the more pressing of gourmet tourism questions: How to create foods that allow people with allergies and intolerances to indulge themselves.

They could always make a beeline for Sláinte and try Eithne's brownies, breads and pear, almond and blueberry cake. All sugar-free, wheat-free, dairy- free, but sweet and almost liquid at the tip of the tongue.

For now you'll find her at Clonakilty market and can contact her direct on 087-758 8846.

Gourmet tourism is of course about much more than tradition. In this small part of Ireland the level of innovation is as impressive as the historical bounty. Twice a day, the rivers turn round and flow backwards.