Our last ramble on the food of Ireland, we’ll finally address the ubiquitous institution of “The Pubs”. As it turned out I didn’t do as well as I had anticipated before the trip. There’s those expectations again. I had pictured sitting in a pub eating hearty food with pints of Guinness listening to traditional Irish music and generally carrying on. Mostly, due to my own doing, this really didn’t happen. For one thing climbing up circular, dark, staircases in ancient castles can be tiring, and despite the wonderful things we learned and saw during the day, the body just can’t support heading out late in the evening anymore. From what I saw, they really don’t start happening until sometime after ten o’clock. I think one would have to tailor one’s itinerary with that in mind. I will hasten to add, however that there were a few stalwart souls on the trip that were able to burn the candles at both ends.
Pubs are literally on almost every street corner, regardless of the size of the town. They’re in the big cities
They’re out in the country
In short, they’re everywhere.
I did get a chance to go inside a couple, for lunches both in the cities and the country, and what food we had was quite good. Menus varied a lot as to options, from just sandwiches to pretty much fullish meals like bangers and mash (The Hairy Lemon, Dublin)
Here is one we had lunch at in Ballyvaughan in County Clare after we toured the Burrens.
It was charming inside
And we had a very nice lunch of soup and salads. All of the soups we encountered in Ireland seemed to be cream based and pureed. If they say “vegetable” soup, you’ll get a tasty bowl of greenish creamy soup. Service was, as everywhere earnest and helpful.
And when you get back on the bus, there are helpful road signs for navigation..
So our exposure to “pub food” was quite limited, but what we had was good. Each place we went was unique in it’s décor, usually several smallish rooms, some with upstairs, mostly you get the feeling of “cozy”. Dumb word, but you get the idea. And besides the food aspect there was the
Music.
Despite my opening remarks, I did haul myself out a couple of times at night (before the witching hour of 10 mostly) and did encounter a couple of pubs (Kyteler's in Kilkenny) that were featuring music. I think out of the maybe 4 musicians I saw min various pubs, 3 of them were playing the banjo, and the other an amplified guitar.
Another instance in one of our hotels, they announced that there would be live music in their lounge starting at ten. Okay, so i went down about ten of, and sure enough there were musicians setting up. After a good bit of set up and testing, they started to play----a rendition of "Mac the Knife", followed by several other standards of similar genre.. not everybody wants "traditional", another hurdle.
I had expected/hoped to find fiddle and accordion, maybe the Bodhran, penny whistle or the like. Nope, banjo and one guitar. Not that that was bad, just not what I had hoped. The music and musicians were good, but I really wanted to find a fiddle..
Our last meal in Dublin the night before we departed was in the Temple Bar area, at a Pub & Restaurant called “The Oliver St. John Gogarty”, named for a person by that name who was sort of (in)famous as a rebel and a jokester. They have “traditional” on all their voluminous souvenir pamphlets and rack cards.
My first impression was “tourist trap’, but I was once again proven wrong in my normal pessimistic view of things. Our small party of 40 or so was ushered into an upstairs room set with long tables (excuse the mediocre photograpy)
Our travel hosts provided wine and of course there was also Guinness if you wished.
The menu was again a table d’hote affair with three choices of starters (Renvyle House Smoked Salmon; Esther Dunne’s Potato Cake with Bacon; Bacon Spare Ribs –traditional ringside dish with traditional sauce); and three main courses (Poached Irish Salmon – leeks, lobster, and cognac sauce; Gaelic Steak – stuff with an Irish Whisky cream sauce; and Trinity College Chicken – Original Recipe dates back to 1800) and a selection of desserts. I tried the ribs, and MFO the potato cake (a tennis sized ball of deep fried potato which was very tasty); I did the salmon and MFO the Chicken. Again all the food was quite good.
so the sated, tired travelers went back to a final night of hotel sleeping and changed from
DFD
to
DFT(ravel)
PS: of course you know John Lennon would have been 70 today. an interesting image. Go check out Google home page if you see this saturday (10/9)
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