Chefs stay local as leaders feast on Kilkeel crab, Kettyle beef and whiskey custard

Leaders of the world’s most powerful countries feasted on local Northern Irish delicacies at the G8 summit in Lough Erne this evening.

The menu for the meal was: Kilkeel crab, prawn and avocado salad followed by roast fillet and braised shin of Kettyle beef, with artichokes and Antrim new potatoes followed by a dessert of Apple crumble with Bushmills whiskey custard.

The eight G8 prime ministers and presidents — David Cameron, US president Barack Obama, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, France’s Francois Hollande, Italian PM Enrico Letta, Canada’s Stephen Harper and Shinzo Abe of Japan — were joined by European Commission and Council presidents Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman van Rompuy for the intimate meal at the end of the first day of the summit.

The 10 leaders were alone in the room without advisers, in order to create an atmosphere to meet Mr Cameron’s hope for “a meeting where we can look each other in the eye, cut through the obstacles and the opposition and generate the political will to solve the problems we face”.

The working dinner, which focused on foreign affairs issues including Syria and Libya, took place in a waterside lodge at the luxury Lough Erne golfing resort near Enniskillen, where the two-day summit is being staged.

The room features a traditional Irish hotel bar and fireside seats to encourage the leaders to linger for a chat over a glass of whiskey or a pint of Guinness.