Sunday, October 14, 2012

Galway Chapter Two, Dining Diary



Well, dear friends it is time to move along in our travel diary to: Galway, Chapter Two - Dining.  Chapter One (The Festival) is not quite complete, leaving Saturday night and Sunday day open.  We will revisit those at a later date.. But, I feel the need to talk about our food experiences.  Mr. Foodie is feeling food talk withdrawal, and we kind of need to leave Ireland as there are Southern Maryland things to talk about starting to pile up..  like new places to eat...

Meanwhile, back to the Emerald Isle and our food adventures.  This is kind of an oversimplification, but there are two levels of dining or eating available.  There are fine dining places, and then there are layers and layers of (for want of a better term),  informal or “pub food”.  The whole culture of pubs is worth talking about, but I think we’ll start at the top and work down (bad choice of words but you get the drift) to them.  All in all, we had about four and a half meals in the restaurant variety meals, and a few in the pub setting.  Before we left, I consulted a few folks who had been there, did some research on Yelp, Trip Advisor, and various sites, so we had a pretty good working list of restaurants when we arrived.

I could probably fill up a posting with each of those more formal restaurants we tried, and in fact I probably could kill the better part of one with just about each dish.  But in the interest of both of our times, I will struggle to be brief (postscript, it didn't work), since unfortunately neither of us will probably be back there real soon..  Overall, I would have to say in general the food we had was excellent.   One is tempted to think everything is wonderful just because you are away from home, on “vacation”, and in a new place.  I tried to stay objective and I think I still have that opinion of the level of the food.  Uniformly, presentation is taken very seriously, maybe even more so that we are used to here, and save one dish they all were nicely plated.  They still serve the fish skin side up which I will never understand, but there you are.  Pretension is never present, and although décor is tasteful it is not overdone, or lavish.  Just appropriate for the food.  It all fits together. That carries over to the servers, we found them to be straight forward, no goofy canned, rote speeches about taking care of you, no names, just what can I get you.  They don’t hover, ask “how’s that workin’ for ya” creating a very nice experience.

Our first real restaurant meal was on the Thursday we arrived.  We were still feeling frisky for not having crashed the car on the “other side of the road”,  being talked down to the hotel, checked in, and after resting a bit, we decided to “go out”.  The h/motel we were in (Jurys Inn) was very centrally located and within easy walking distance of most of the restaurants.  In Galway there is a “pedestrianized” street where just foot traffic is allowed.  There are a lot of pubs, shops, and restaurants of varying quality there, and tucked in a side street is a place called “The Malt House” which we had heard good things about...

 

I called for a booking and it was no problem.  It is kind of out of the way and a bit immune from the crowds celebrating Arthur’s day.  I am not sure what to call the décor

 

just kind of comfortable.  A wall of very interesting plates..  We were seated next to the window so we could see outside and were soon asked what we would like to drink.  Having learned my lesson on cocktails over there, we said we would like a minute to look at the wine list. Our server pointed out the blackboard with specials of the day which we could not read at all so she recited them for us.  We eventually chose a bottle of Sancerre since we were leaning toward fish.  Besides the chalk board, the regular menu had many choices so a glass or two of the wine was necessary to arrive at the final selections.   MFO decided on polenta/Oyster dumplings, and a main dish of pan seared scallops, while I wanted a slow roasted pork belly starter and a roasted Turbot with glazed oysters for my main plate.  Things moved along at a nice pace, and soon the first courses arrived.

 
Pork Belly above, Oysters Below
 

Aren't they pretty?  And, although we were starved enought to eat our shoes at this point, we found them to be amazingly good. We found that pork belly was on many menus we saw.  Pork fat does rule.  Our main courses arrived, scallops and risotto

 
then the Turbot...

 

I thought it really suffered presentation wise because it was pretty monochromatic, white fish, white plate, blond (glazed) oysters with the little polenta cake.  It certainly didn’t distract from the taste however, which was fine, just not as pretty as it could be.  For dessert we did a cheese plate, with a glass of refreshing house made apple juice.   I augmented that with a glass of Port.

 

A very nice introduction to dining in Galway

The next couple of days  and evenings were absorbed by the Festival, so Sunday night was our next dining out opportunity.  We chose the nearby Ard Bia at Nimmos (which I still don’t quite get the meaning of).  It’s located along the quay near the river by the Spanish Arch (where the parade formed up), it’s in the background of this of MFO and the Town Crier (and, as it turned out, the head of the Japanese contingent).

 

It’s just a little place with maybe only eight or nine tables on the main floor and I think some on the second floor but we didn’t go up there.  It is quite “cottegey” inside with stone walls and lovely little windows.  Across from our table - how  charming..

 

The menus were on brown paper, and looked to be typed with a typewriter in Courier.  After we perused the menu (again leaning toward fish), we looked at the wine list It was a very intriguing wine list.  Bottles from all over.. A bottle caught my eye that was from the Basque region: Hondarrabi, Txacoli de Getaria; the "Txacoli" rang a bell as something I had read about recently, so we ordered that.  Much searching ensued with questions between servers “have you seen the…?” and eventually a bottle was brought to the table that had none of the words on the wine list on the front of the bottle.  Our server agreed with us that it probably was not the wine on the list so we substituted an Albarino, Rias Baixas DO (still staying in Spain), it was fresh and clean so we went with that.  We finally got down to being serious about ordering and for once we DID have questions on the menu.   Both had the same answer, but the questions were “what is red gurnard?” and “what is Irish Brill”  the answer to both was “a delicately flavored fish”.  So we decided on splitting a Connemara Crab and Burren Smoked Trout Salad, and MFO opted for the “Roast spiced red gurnard with organic beetroot risotto” and I ordered the “Pan roasted Irish Brill fillet with Gubbeen pancetta, puy lentils, chanterelles, and herb crème fraiche”.

About this time our friendly server approached the table with the original bottle of wine, and pointed out that in the small text on the back label were indeed the words on the wine list for the Txacoli.   She allowed as how we would like our Albarino better as the Txacoli had a bit of a spritz to it..  No recriminations, just a friendly discussion.  We all learned.  Quite pleasant..We continued to enjoy the space and the kind of quiet solitude although there were other diners. 

The salad arrived and was quite good, although it wasn’t exactly what we thought, we expected pieces of crab and trout but it was sort of mixed like a tuna salad.  It was quite good however and we managed to finish it quite easily.  The main dishes came out, first the Gurnard with the beetroot risotto

 

followed by the Brill


Readers will note which side was of the fish is presented.  So, our first action was to “skin” the pieces.  They are not really crispy.  Maybe it is us.  Both pieces of the fish were just delicious and my lentils were a perfect pairing with the fish.  Between the unique atmosphere, the friendly staff, the wine, and the food it was a most enjoyable close to a full day closing out the festival.  We finished our meal with chocolate torte and a mini berry trifle, oh and a glass of Banyuls for good measure.  Trust me the food was pretty before we decimated it!  I always show "before" so here's an "after"!

 

As readers will know, I’m a big fan of “just right” and this was the epitome of that.  It all fit. Upon reflection, I almost think that this experience was the most enjoyable of the trip..

Chapter two, second verse tomorrow.  And yes we were


DFD

 

 

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