Ireland has no real tradition of eating out, but the range and
quality of food has increased enormously in recent years, especially
at the top end of the market, and this edition of the guide includes
the most luxurious and expensive of eating places, along with more
everyday establishments. Outside smart restaurants the best of Irish
food is to be found in seafood bars on the west coast and in the
all-too-rare vegetarian cafés dotted around the country. These
aside, the fresh, though rather plain, selection of vegetables, meat
and breads available in the shops make self-catering a reasonable
option; in some areas these can often be enlivened by a fine
selection of Irish cheeses. If your budget is restricted, the best
bet is to fill up with a hearty breakfast and/or a good lunch from a
pub or coffee shop in the middle of the day, and then concentrate on
drinking in the evening - few pubs serve food at night
Food
Irish food is generally highly meat-oriented, and you
don't have to be a vegetarian to find this wearing after a while. Having
said that, meat in Ireland is generally of a good standard - lamb and
steaks, in particular, are excellent - it's just that, after a while you
begin to long for some variety in your diet and for something which
hasn't been grilled or fried.
If
you're staying in B&Bs, you'll most likely be served the hearty
"traditional" Irish breakfast of sausages, bacon and eggs, which
usually comes accompanied by generous quantities of delicious soda
bread. Country pub lunch staples are usually meat and two veg,
with plenty of potatoes and gravy, although you can usually get
sandwiches (sometimes excellent, but often sliced white bread and
processed cheese), and homemade soups can be very good too. Most larger
towns have good, simple coffee shops (open daytime only) where
you can get soup, sandwiches, cakes and scones, and a choice of one or
two hot lunches. In the North expect enormous platters of meat,
vegetables - most usually cabbage - and plenty of potatoes. It's worth
remembering that many hotels in the Republic will offer food to
non-residents so you can usually find a sandwich and a cup of coffee at
any reasonable hour, which can be especially worth remembering on
Sundays. You can generally order a plate of sandwiches and a pot of tea
in pubs too - as long as it's before 6pm. This said, huge areas of the
countryside offer no places to eat or drink at all - and many cafés and
restaurants outside the cities close from September through to May. If
you are going to explore the best of the landscape, you'll probably need
to take your own provisions.
Many traditional Irish dishes, served up in abundance in many areas of
rural Ireland, are based on the potato and you certainly do get
an awful lot of them - often served up in several different forms in the
same meal. Potato cakes can be magnificent - a flour and potato dough
fried in butter - as can potato soup. Irish stew of varying
qualities will be available almost everywhere. Colcannon - known
as champ in the North - made up of cooked potatoes fried in
butter with onions and cabbage, or leeks, is delicious. Barm brack
, a sweet yeast bread with spices and dried fruits, is thoroughly
traditional; carrot cake is perhaps a more recent introduction
and is seen in coffee shops and tea rooms throughout the Republic.
Throughout Ireland's major cities it's a different story: in the
Republic the economic boom of recent years coupled with the return of a
large number of Irish people who have been living overseas, means that
increasingly inexpensive lunch and dinner menus may just as easily see
Mediterranean influences as those of the traditional Irish
farmhouse - and vegetarians can expect far more variety too.
Drink
To travel through Ireland without visiting a pub
would be to miss out on a huge chunk of Irish life, some would say the
most important. Especially in rural areas, the pub is far more than just
a place to drink. It's the communal and conversational heart of any
Irish village, and often the cultural centre too. If you're after food,
advice or company, the pub is almost always the place to head for; and
very often they'll also be the venues for local entertainment,
especially traditional and not so traditional music .
Along with Mass and market day, the pub is the centre of Irish social
activity: a cultural cliché, perhaps, but one that wears very well.
Talking is an important business here, and drink is the great lubricant
of social discourse. That said, it doesn't pay to arrive with too
romantic a notion of what this actually means. Away from the cities and
the touristed west coast, there are plenty of miserable, dingy bars
where the only spark of conviviality is the dull glow of the TV. But in
most big towns and cities you'll find bars heaving with life, and out in
remote country villages it can be great fun drinking among the shelves
of the ancient grocery shops-cum-bars you'll find dotted around.
While women will always be treated with genuine (unreconstructed)
civility, it's true to say that the majority of bars in country areas
are a predominantly male preserve. In the evening, especially, women
travellers can expect occasional unwanted attention, though this rarely
amounts to anything too unpleasant. Should your first encounters be bad
ones, persist - the good nights will come, and will probably rank
amongst the most memorable experiences of your trip. In the major cities
and large towns things are a lot more balanced and women drinking in
bars is totally the norm.
In
the Republic, opening hours are Monday to Wednesday 10.30am to
11.30pm; Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10.30am to 12.30am; Sunday 12.30
to 11pm. In the North pubs are open Monday to Saturday 11am to
11pm, on Sunday 12.30 to 10pm.
Ireland
