Ireland: Cuisine


Overall, the food in Ireland is not very foreign compared to here in the states. At least, the ingredients aren't, but far more common are dishes like chowder, lamb soup, and of course, the ever-present club sandwich. Most places we ate at listed multiple items as having ingredients that were Irish-grown, and far more were listed as organic. In fact, we even ate at a restaurant in which all its vegetables and fruits were grown out back in a garden. The owner of this restaurant/store combo really kicked off the organic movement in Ireland, and is the reason why so much of Ireland's produce is organic today. She even has her own cooking tutorials, known internationally.

I myself had the pleasure of eating four club sandwiches in four days, a choice which I do not regret to this day. At each location, however, the sandwich was served slightly different to the one before. A pub in Waterford, for example, toasted and buttered their bread, while a restaurant in Killarney served their sandwich without a third piece of bread in the middle. It was refreshing to get a slightly different serving of the same tastes. 

There are, however, foreign-themed and foreign restaurants in Ireland. On Christmas day, there were only six places open in Dublin, of which all six were Chinese restaurants. We chose to walk to the nearest one, which fortunately was not Chinese-themed, but was, in fact, a true Chinese restaurant. I never understood how Chinese imitations could never have dumplings as soft as actual dumplings.