Georgina Campbell's latest Jameson Guide to the hotels and restaurants of Ireland lies before me now, and I gaze on it with the rapt awe one might reserve for a particularly voluptuous piece of erotica. It speaks of a land I know virtually nothing of and of counties which are unrecogniseable from only a few years ago. Name after name rolls before me, on page after page, of places to eat and stay, and it is almost eery: for this is an island I know so well, yet now I can wander around it, a complete stranger, a Martian whose vessel is broken down, and here he is, marooned on a way-station he hasn't visited in years.
What does he see, this Martian, as he skims around his new home, looking for food? Let us guide him to Roscommon, where a decade or so ago he would have found Wong's Take Away in Roscommon Town, and a chip van which was open four nights a week in Boyle. Now there are 10 restaurants good enough to pass Georgina Campbell's rigorously unforgiving standards, including a genuinely authentic Chinese restaurant in Boyle, which does not serve curried chips or sweet and sour chicken in batter.
Unrelated
(And the question which often torments this Martian at 3.30 a.m. is this: Where were the extraordinary dishes and fictional conventions of Chinese restaurants in Ireland and Britain perfected? They are completely unrelated to authentic Chinese food, so how did they come to be standardised? Our poor baffled Martian has closely studied this enigma, and has yet found no answer.)
Now. Let us escort our little friend in his gravitron-powered vehicle from Roscommon to a county of equally inauspicious gastronomic credentials, the neighbouring land of Leitrim, the least populous part of Ireland. Here there are 16 restaurants which have passed Georgina's gimlet gaze and searching palate (and that does not include the Harbour Lights Hotel, so good, apparently that is listed twice; once in Leitrim, and once Roscommon. Maybe they can have a war over it).
What other place, though not traditionally redolent of Lyons, is in this extremely useful book, wonders our little Martian. The last time he was in Ireland, Laois was Queen's County, and had a single tea-shop in Maryborough. Time, it seems has been less kind to this county than others, a mere five establishments from here being included, including one of the most wonderful pubs in Ireland, Morrisseys, of Abbeyleix, and two restaurants which seem worth a detour, Roundwood House of Mountrath and the Kitchen and Food Hall of Portlaoise. Though to use the term "detour" about Laois is just a little tautological.
Pleased
Our little visitor clambered back aboard his speed machine, and a second later was in Dublin, which when he was last here, had just three good hotels, one restaurant, a couple of cafes, and the Coffee Inn in Duke Street. He toured the restaurants with Georgina's guide in hand and was most agreeably pleased - he recently was stranded in London, and after that salutarily expensive experience, he was relieved at both the prices of Dublin restaurants, and the quality of much of the food.
But he was also rather surprised that Georgina should think Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud is worth but one star, and Thornton's two. They are both splendid restaurants in which our little green visitor has now eaten a number of times: Thorntons was always good, but Guilbaud's was always better, most of all in the details that the French do so well and which always impress our chartreuse-coloured guests. The cheeseboard, in particular, appealed to our Martian: he would happily sell his 295year-old grandmother into the crew of a Klingon slave galley in exchange for it. Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud stands today where it has stood for the best part of 20 years, the jewel in the crown of the capital's cuisine.
Game available
Our Martian friend has taken his Jameson guide back home with him, much impressed, but with one large question. At this time of year, right across Europe, game and gamebirds are freely available in restaurants and butchers. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, snipe, grouse, wild teal, widgeon and mallard, goose, rabbit, hare, venison; why are these beasts almost entirely absent from the national cuisine (though not Guilbaud's)? Why can a Chinese restaurtant prosper in the Irish countryside, but not one serving the local game?
We have such extensive waterways, mountain moor and marsh, and the vast wildlife that they produce yet do not eat it, preferring farmed meat even in the midst of food-scares and addled beasts' brains. Our loughs and our bogs are larders, home to the healthiest food you can find; yet most of our restaurants and our butchers' shops, in city, town and countryside alike, do not stock it; and if they did, it would probably go uneaten. For an Irish restaurateur or butcher to go bust, all he need do is specialise in game.
Is that the legacy of landlordism? Only to a degree; for all countries had landlords who guarded their brake and game with keeper, mantrap and the hangman's noose. Yet just about alone of all the countries of Europe, we seem to have no culinary culture based on the natural foods of the countryside. Feathered or furred, these are still plentiful, though largely unmolested by the Irish people, just as our waters once teemed with unfished fish while famished seashore residents crooned after purely legendary cattle, loftily spurning food with fin or scale.
Why, uniquely here, why?