But all is changed utterly, say the Irish hospitality industry and foodie buzz. The Irish have become prosperous and, of all things, European. I decided a food safari was in order to smell what was cooking. Here is a chronicle of some meals during my recent visit: a sampling of the new and old, a search for the best seafood chowder in the West, and how I came to love the blood of pigs.
A prudent travel plan is to eat what the country does best, and so it’s said that when in Ireland, eat breakfast three times a day. So my wife, Mary, and I start the hunt at Galway City’s Elles Cafe, a modern place advertising "certified organic coffee." Alas, a "classic" omelet has the lightness of a paving stone, with slices of bubble-gum-colored ham fresh from shrink wrap, and pieces of greenish tomato with a hunk of stem still attached. The coffee is certifiably appalling.
Ah, but lunch. Now we know what they’re talking about. On Quay Street, a pedestrian-only street of this medieval college town dedicated to fun, we find Trattoria Pasta Mista . It’s a true trattoria, like those found in every town in Italy, down to murals of local sites committed by a less-than-Sunday painter, moronic Euro-pop, crisp and professional service, and sensational food: plump mussels posillipo with fresh tomatoes, mopped up with toasted spears of Tuscan bread. Scarlet carpaccio on a nest of baby arugula topped by broad shavings of Parmesan. Prawn and crab ravioli topped by sweet sun-dried tomatoes strewn with bitter olives, creating an opposite-attracts love affair.

read_more


Tags: ,