“A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.”
I knew that a lot had changed at my old culinary school before I turned off the Black Horse Pike in Mays Landing into the campus. There were better and brighter signs on the road to the parking lots, for starters. I peeked down drives slowly, trying to remember which lots were for students and faculty and which ones a visitor would go unnoticed in.
The larger one in the back of the campus- now shaded by sun covers that doubled as solar energy panels- fit the bill and it was right near the main entrance that I rarely used as a student. Students always went in a side door near a smaller lot, closer to the majority of the classrooms and kitchens. Not that too many young culinarians still used it. Class sizes apparently plummeted due to COVID and the Culinary Industry Brain Drain. Even coming from a community college, culinary school wasn’t a winning proposition for young people tight on money and prospects. It was a place now for two kinds of students- the passionate, and the lost.
Fortunately, those are exactly the kinds of folks that have kept the industry moving for years. I walked up the wide, low concrete steps and pushed open the door. Rather than noise from busy kitchens and clamoring students in pressed white uniforms, I’m greeted by silence- and the mingled smells of butter, hot fat, flour, bread ovens, and cold vegetables. I can never forget that smell. Some things haven’t changed at all.
I was sitting in the break room at the winery, having just finished my lunch. It was a chilly, sunny day, and the break room has a really nice window that looks out on the terrace, the waterfall feature on the grounds, and beyond that over the valley.
I was debating how to best pull off the rest of the week, crank out a new bread recipe for my chef’s latest special, and what kind of desserts I should do for the seasonal menu change. I was grateful for the distraction. The toxicity of social media around the Israel-Hamas War was still trickling through despite me pulling back. When that many lives and that much culture is on the line and the generational trauma of two entire peoples is simultaneously triggered, there’s too much at stake for it to be managed through TikTok videos, memes, and idiotic flame wars- but here we are.
It made my heart hurt, and my mental health required me backing off, so I’d resolved to do what I’d always done when feeling pained and powerless- feed people, and put good things into the world that weren’t there before.
Then my phone rang. It was my wife, nearly in tears. Life was about to provide an object lesson in Pain, Powerlessness, what we do in the face of it, and the things that mean more than posting “the right things” on social media.
It rained last night. The tiny puddles on the furniture of the screened-in patio tell that clearly enough, and there is still the smell of petrichor in the air beneath the smell of pine in the pre-dawn humidity. I’m back on the East Coast, visiting my in-laws in South Carolina, and the weather of the southeast is both oppressive and comforting- like an old friend who can’t help but keep mentioning how much both of you have changed.
As the previous two weeks of work came to a close- preparing for a massive event, the increasing tempo of business, and preparing my small team (and the kitchen itself) for my absence- I dragged myself into the first of two too-cheap-for-their-price plane seats and quoted the Magnus Archives again. “I have done my work well, and none may ask more of me.”
I’d normally apologize for missing posting for three weeks in a row, but in this case my wife and I have been traveling in Ireland for a long-awaited honeymoon, came home, and quarantined with Covid for a week. Therefore, between finally getting out to travel and coughing up a solid quart of mucus, I’m not going to be apologizing for shit.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about where everything good comes from.
We wound our way from Dublin to the Aran Islands, through large cities and smaller villages with various amounts of tourist-minded accoutrements. We ate at small pubs and fine restaurants, and I had enough Traditional Irish Breakfasts that I’ll be pleased not to see a black or white pudding for a while.
Everywhere we stopped though, we always sought out the same thing- what is everyone else eating, and where is the best stuff? Almost every time, it was out of the way, made well, and made simply.
Whether you are dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant or an airport fast food joint, all food has its source in simple questions: What can we eat? How do we eat it? How do we make it good?
Shepard’s Pie and a local porter was we went around the Ring of Kerry
Ireland is, arguably unfairly, not considered a “food destination.” We were warned of that by a well-meaning travel agent friend and had it confirmed to us by others after we returned. I wouldn’t say Ireland doesn’t have good food. Emily and I found plenty of places where the food was excellent- The Laurels Pub and Restaurant and The Celtic Whiskey Bar and Larder, both in Killarney, come immediately to mind. There are certainly more and finer places elsewhere in the country that we didn’t get to visit.
Potato Pancake with Chicken, Bacon, and Mushroom Gravy. The Laurels, Killarney Beer-braised Short Ribs. The Laurels, Killarney Goat Cheese Tortellini, The Celtic Whiskey Bar and LarderCharcuterie Board, the Celtic Whiskey Bar and Larder Killarney Chicken Maryland at our hotel in Galway.Some of the best dishes we had on our trip. Gonna spend a lot more time in Killarney and Kerry next time…
Instead, what I will say is that Ireland knows what its foodis about, doesn’t get overly fussy about it, and doesn’t particularly care if it impresses outsiders.
As Emily and I wandered around Dublin, we noticed that almost every pub- from the tiny one just off the road to the biggest and busiest bar in the Temple Bar Area- had the exact same menu. It truly seemed like the decision of “which pub to go to” could truly only be decided by personal or logistic factors- which was closest to you, where your friends usually were, which bartender you knew best, who you thought poured the best pint, and whose prices you thought were best. All other factors- food, beer, whiskey selection- were essentially static.
Beef Cottage Pie at The Boars Head, Dublin
The menu was nearly always a set thing, nailed down out of convenience and tradition- heavy, meaty, starchy, stick-to-your-ribs, stone-in-your-gut food meant to fill you and go with a pint. If you are spending your days wandering from tourist spot to tourist spot, you will get sick of the monotonous “Irish cuisine” really quick and find yourself going find Chinese, Mediterranean, Japanese, or any of the other cuisines that one can find in a worldly metropolis- whether or not you’ve been getting wrecked on Guinness and whiskey every night. I enjoy my booze just fine, but Emily and I were happy to find places like Lee’s Charming Noodles and Rotana City a few nights.
Frankly decent Beef and Guinness Stew in Galway
If you don’t get outside of major cities (or don’t have a budget to visit a Michelin-starred restaurant), you can absolutely come away from a trip to Ireland thinking more fondly of the booze than the food, and all I can say about that is that you weren’t in the state the food was ever meant for.
Toward the end of our trip, Emily and I were in Galway and we spent a stormy day on Innishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay and home to a long and happily-commercialized history of fishing, sheep farming, and knitting. It had been raining nearly constantly since we got to Galway and we were indeed equipped for rain, but being halfway out into the North Atlantic meant the rain was more like a storm. The one small town on the island was cozy, but anything that we wanted to see or do that didn’t involve drinking or buying sweaters meant renting some bikes, rolling through the cliffs and hills, and getting wet.
Excuse the nervous face- the bikes and roads had both seen better days…
It was after biking along the wet and winding roads for a while that Em and I bellied up into Joe Watty’s- the local Irish Pub- and encountered The Menu again. This time, however, we were in the right state for it. The seafood chowder was the best I’d had in ages, and Emily tackled her fish and chips with a vengeance. We both annihilated our beers, and- sitting in yet another pub with the menu we’d gotten weary of in Dublin- we got it.
My wife ordered Fish and Chips and the local session lager at Joe Watty’s in Kilronan on Innishmore, the Aran Islands and I had the seafood chowder. When you are in a place where they’ve been living off the sea for millenia, you don’t order the fucking chicken fingers.
The food in that pub was meant for the rainy, cold days on the North Atlantic when no matter what you were out in it doing your thing- shepherding sheep or tourists, hauling in fish or selling knitwear. The food in Dublin pubs was still food for soaking up a beer or two after a hard day.
It was the same, functional, tasty, stretchable cuisine it had always been. It was meant to feed and sate more than tantalize. It was meant to make us ready to go back out into the rain, not waddle off to the next tourist trap. It’s been doing the job well enough for a few centuries, and it doesn’t need your snarky Yelp reviews thank you very much.
No, we all shouldn’t go back to eating gruel and nuts. There’s room to actually enjoy food at the table beyond subsistence and yes- get someone hungry enough and they’ll eat nearly anything. We shouldn’t disparage comfort food just because we don’t need comfort when we’re eating it though. We don’t get to write off a whole country as “not a food destination” just because we’re not the audience the food was created for. Food was, and is, an aspect of culture. The ability to appreciate food holistically- as part of world and where it fits in the culture that created it- is as pivotal to appreciating good food as appreciating technique, history or pedigree.
I look forward to traveling more, tasting more, and challenging more of my preconceptions about “food destinations.” Especially once I can taste things clearly again.
Not everyone would spend one of their days off stomping through the city in the rain, through campgrounds, railroad crossings and service roads just to find a tiny ramen joint and a brewery not long for this world.
Those people aren’t me, and they surely don’t live in Portland.
Excuse the hat hair- I was just happy to be out of the rain for a minute.Continue reading →
The Black Hat Baker 