1980s REVISITED:Going to a restaurant was seen as prohibitively expensive and definitely a foreign thing to do, writes Hugo Arnold
WHAT DID WE EAT in the 1980s? And where did we eat it? In the home mostly, as the idea of going out was both prohibitively expensive and definitely foreign. With a handful of exceptions, inspiration was found abroad, and within the confines of formal, classical training. Starched linen to the fore, or bistros with a twist.
Outposts of culinary excellence existed, but they were they few and far between: Armstrong's Barn in Co Wicklow; the Fishery in Ballyconneely, Co Galway; Le Petite France in Castlebar; Le Coq Hardi and Snaffles in Dublin, to name just a few examples. Indeed, Dublin only had four restaurants that rated a mention in The Good Food Guide in 1980, a number which grew to six by the time of the 1988 guide.
What is also interesting, however, is the dishes we dined on. Ham with pineapple, mushrooms with fresh mayonnaise, "aromatic" filter coffee. In Trudi's in Dún Laoghaire, you could have crab and orange soup, avocado with prawn mayonnaise, and either chicken Kiev or trout in almonds. The potatoes, apparently, "might have been been better without the coating of red cheddar".
Oh the sophistication of it! Among all this, however, there were a few beacons of light and it is fascinating to see how things are coming full circle. Take the following comment from the guide on Knockferry Lodge in Co Galway: "Salmon is from Lough Corrib and smoked locally, prawns and sole are from Galway Bay, lamb from Connemara, and gazpacho Des Moran is from the owner's garden. After a year's testing, Des seems to have settled on vanilla for his home-made ice-cream, except in blackberry season. Watercress and sorrel grace soups in June. Smoked pike is recommended by the kitchen. Italian house wine, £3 a litre."
Ireland had its culinary heroes then, and some of them are still household names to many of us. Myrtle Allen at Ballymaloe - how radical it must have been in 1964 to open your doors to the public like she did. But also the likes of Declan Ryan at Arbutus Lodge, Wolfgang Stroms at the Earl of Glengall in Cahir, Gerard Morice at Le Petite France in Castlebar, John Howard at Le Coq Hardi in Dublin.
The reality is, most, although not all, of the thrust of culinary Ireland in the 1980s was dominated by French-inspired country hotel cooking. It was treat dining that enabled a degree of poshing up.
At home, if you were lucky, it was good solid grub, wholesome food to get your teeth into. My childhood memories are filled with the likes of liver and onions, cod baked with anchovy and cream, rich shin of beef stews, and in the summer, poached wild salmon with hollandaise - food that is still hard to find when you eat out, but food which ultimately was about good, local, seasonal ingredients.
We still have a long way to go. Things are changing, but changing slowly. Casual eating that is about reflecting our location and culture, and the seasons, remains the exception, not the rule. We may have jumped out of the kitchen and into convenience, but we still lag behind the rest of Europe in being able to eat what somebody has grown, raised or caught, just down the road, in easy, comfortable surroundings and at a price level that encourages us to do it often.
It is too easy to blame restaurateurs for this, however. We are as much at fault. In these straitened times, it might seem odd to be promoting the idea of more restaurants, but think of the economic sense. Farmers grow and raise things, somebody cooks and serves them, and we go and eat not just on Friday, but on Monday, too.
What can we learn from the 1980s? That good solid, locally inspired cooking has a lot to commend it. Not least the price - £3 for a litre of Italian wine brings tears to the eyes, but so too does lamb's kidneys in mustard sauce and ox-tongue vinaigrette, both, in the 1980s, costing £3.25 at Snaffles in Dublin. More of the same, please.