I have begun my great return tour of Dublin and its environs – my parents do, after all, live in Kildare, and much as I feel myself a Dubliner, I cannot deny the geography – and I have been both disappointed and thrilled, albeit at different moments.
One of the things I’ve missed most about Ireland is the food. Here, I feel I should caveat by writing about the friends and family I love and miss on a daily basis, but that feels superfluous. It should go without saying that I miss the people the most.
But I can chat to them on FaceTime, and WhatsApp, and occasionally on Skype, although I must admit that I have forgotten my login and rarely have cause to use it. (The last time was when my Dad wasn’t answering his WhatsApps and, suspecting he was sitting at his laptop, as he is wont to do for 16-odd hours of the day, I tried him on Skype.)
There is, sadly, no technology yet available by which to access the joys of Irish food. Sure, there are websites aimed at Irish ex-pats selling “Irish sausages” and “Irish bread”, but I am fussy, and I don’t want any old Irish sausage. I want Superquinn sausages, and thick toastie sliced pan, and the chorizo that you can only get in Two Boys Brew, in Phibsboro; the home-made granola you’ll find in Two Pups; the cinnamon rolls baked by Scéal Bakery in Stoneybatter, and sold at the Fumbally in Dublin 8.
I want a full Irish breakfast in the Avoca café; I think, frequently, of the croissants in Bread41; I can’t wait to sit down in Brother Hubbard and eat a plain scone with their orange blossom butter smeared on top. You cannot order these things from a website.
However. However. My trip home is lasting exactly 18 days, and this is not enough days. I have people to see and scones to eat, sure – but I also have a baby to entertain, and feed, and change, and supervise during naptime.
I have parents to spend time with and a dog to cuddle (So. Many. Doggy. Cuddles) and slow walks to take around the area where I grew up. “Remember the [redacted] family? Well, their daughter built a house on the land at the back of their house. No planning permission. It’s been sitting there for three years now, they’re fighting it tooth and nail.”
Even if I did have all the time – and money – in the world, some things are out of my control. The café at Avoca, for example, has closed. “It’s self-service only,” my Mum tells me gleefully, knowing full well the horror I feel at the prospect of carrying my food across a room on a tray. I think I have PTSD from years of eating lunch at the Kylemore Cafe in the Stephens’ Green Centre.
I went to the shop in Avoca the other day as a form of compromise. I was unable to get my full Irish breakfast, but I bought four scones; four cream buns (three coffee slices and a chocolate roulade for a visiting friend who has no taste); two tubs of berry granola; Glenilen clotted cream; and a jar of Avoca raspberry jam. My total came to €55 and I will admit, I thought to myself, it’s probably just as well the café is gone.
Echoes of the pandemic are everywhere. I knew that we, as a people, had changed – we have lived through something unprecedented, at least in our lifetimes, and we can’t turn back the clock. The idea of the “new normal”, which did, for a time, feel temporary, is no longer an idea but instead a very real transformation we have all undergone.
In a way, it feels a bit like we’re in an episode of Sliders, or Quantum Leap – our world is the same but our reality, the context through which we experience it, is different.
Today I took the train into Grand Canal Dock from Hazelhatch. The service is sporadic, at best – the route is an hourly one, and there was a sense of urgency to both legs. If I miss this one, I thought, as I ran up what felt like 300 steps to the platform, I’ll have to wait an hour for the next.
As I walked from the station to my appointment on Haddington Rd, my watch lit up with a notification. “It looks like you’re exercising,” it told me, demonstrating a function I didn’t know it had. We don’t really walk in Fort Wayne.
Once, I walked from Best Buy across the road to Target, thinking, if I can see it from the car park, I can walk to it. I ended up making my way through a series of small, thick, spiky bushes. Drivers eyed me suspiciously as they roared past.
I ate my lunch today in Sprout, an old favourite. The turkey satay is gone; it is now chicken satay, so I suppose I can’t complain too much. They now offer warm bowls; I chose the Middle Eastern Chicken bowl: chicken and spicy cauliflower and hummus and baby spinach. They don’t accept cash any more. The bowls are now compostable, as are the wooden knives and forks. Some changes are good.
There are more foods on my list, but I don’t know if I’ll manage to tick everything off the list. I am toying with the idea of making an early-morning run to Bread41, which opens at 7am, a full two hours before we plan on being at the airport. I could stock up on pastries to bring back to the Midwest. I could feed them to my husband and say, “See? This is what I’m talking about.”
But I’m not sure if there would be any satisfaction in knowing that he, too, dreams of flaky pastry.
Of course, the obvious conclusion to most of this would be for me to learn to bake. How hard can it be? I have thought, more than once, but numerous terrible errors have taught me that it can, indeed, be hard.
Anyway, nothing is more satisfying to me than spending an extortionate amount of money on something delicious and temporary, and saying to my mother, “I’m putting money into the economy.”
The First Leg of my Gastronomical Homecoming Tour