Our Food Culture



This is going to be a bit of a rant, and it's been coming for a while. Where have our traditional foods gone?  We have become food snobs, no longer eating the foods associated with leaner times.  We now seek out anything but Irish.  Even where the dishes do not exist in their associated country they're more acceptable, more available than Irish food.  Spaghetti Bolognese, Chicken Masala, Sweet & Sour, none of these exists "at home" but its better than eating Bacon & Cabbage.  Because we're richer now and more sophisticated and traditional foods are backward, yet we'll gladly eat what we consider to be traditional foods from other countries.
Not one Irish restaurant, to my knowledge, serves dishes like Skirts & Kidney, Ham Hocks, Eye Bones etc you may find these in a pub but not in a restaurant.  "Kiddies Meals" invariably consist of chicken nuggets or sausages that a vegan could eat given the lack of meat content.  Why have a kiddies menu at all? Why not just serve child sized portions from the existing menu?

I was in a west coast village during the summer.  Tourists abounded, both Irish and non.  I went into a local bar / restaurant for lunch.  I could see the ocean from my table.  Yet the only fish available was frozen battered fish with chips.  We live on an island yet fresh fish in a restaurant is as rare as hens teeth.  Pizza, burgers, kebabs, curry no problem, fresh fish not a hope. When it is available it tends to be farmed sea bass from Greece at prices that would make it cheaper to go to Greece and eat it there. Or monkfish, probably the most bland fish in the sea.  When I was a kid, monkfish was used to make scampi, you couldn't give it away.  Now it carries a price similar to a ransom demand.  When is the last time you saw Gurnard or Mackerel on a menu?  These fish are sustainable. Sustainable but not sexy.

I have visited a lot of countries on continental Europe.  Pizza, burgers, kebabs are all available.  Indeed France, a country which has a reputation for culinary excellence has more crap food for sale than most other places.  But it's easy to find a well cooked, quality meal of local traditional food in most towns.  Fresh fish is plentiful, most of it exported from Ireland because there is no demand for it at home.  In Asturias this year I ate tripe, local blackpudding, bean stews and local cider.  All "poor" foods yet all a source of pride and a symbol of local culture and identity.

We have lost our connection between the food on our plates and it's origin.  Most butchers don't butcher their own meats anymore.  Supermarkets wrap everything in nice shiny coverings that have killed the skill of identifying our foods.  We have some of the best produce in the world yet most people don't seem to care.  Water injected meats, chlorine washed salads, battery chickens, industrial breads.  As long as it's cheap it will do. Most of our beer and whiskey comes from a small few producers.  Most of it is bland and boring. Showing an interest in what you eat and drink is seen as odd.  Showing an interest in local beers and traditional foods is seen as odd AND living in the poorer past.  Tsk, we have mobile phones and the internet now, we're cool, we're international.

If we continue to eat foods flown half way around the world we will lose our farming and fishing sectors.  If we lose our them we will lose what is left of our food culture.  If we lose that we lose our national identity and become just another homogenised boring country making and eating crap.  We already lost our brewing and distilling industries, they're fighting a tough battle to be reestablished and appreciated.  Stop the rot.  Get back down to the local butcher, the local fishmonger, the local baker.  Build a relationship with them, educate each other about our foods.  Rediscover dishes like Coddle, Packet & Tripe, Marrow Bones. Buy the best food you can afford, learn to cook it and take pride in it, it is after all a reflection of you.

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