Dressing for success: Popular Kilkenny restaurant relishes ‘best of best’ accolade

A well-known Kilkenny restaurant has been named as one of Ireland’s ‘best of best’ food producers.

The Fig Tree on the High Street is one of just six food and drink producers from across the country named as Grow with Aldi winners for 2021.

Now the Fig Tree’s Honey & Cayenne Dressing €2.99 and Original House Style Dressing €2.99 will launch as an Aldo Specialbuy on September 23 before returning to shelf for a six month period in April 2022.

The Fig Tree rose to the top of 290 products in total which were entered by over 120 Irish food, drink, and non-food suppliers this year, with products from the 56 finalists going on sale in the 148 Aldi stores nationwide as part of Aldi’s Specialbuys in June 2021.

Having been highly commended by the judging panel, the winning six producers came up trumps to secure the opportunity to become a core range listing in Aldi stores nationwide.

Produced by Thomas Clarke (pictured below), who has run The Fig Tree Restaurant on the High Street since 2011, the Fig Tree team recently branched out into making their own range of salad dressings before entering the Grow with Aldi programme 2021.

A delighted Mr Clarke said: “Entering this year’s Grow with Aldi programme is one of the best decisions we have made for our business. Having started with our restaurant on High Street in Kilkenny, we never could have imagined that it would be possible to bring our products and flavours to people all over Ireland, and we are absolutely thrilled at the thought!

“The entire team at The Fig Tree have worked so hard to help make this happen and they deserve this recognition so much.”

Aldi Group Buying Director John Curtin added: “It has been incredible to see the strength and resilience of Irish suppliers, despite a difficult few years. Here at Aldi, we want to reassert Ireland as a hotspot for innovative grassroots suppliers, championing these producers that create top-notch Irish products, and make them accessible for all.

“We’re incredibly proud of the Grow with Aldi programme to date and hope that even more Irish suppliers and businesses will be inspired by our 2021 winners to take a leap of faith and consider entering the 2022 programme next year.”