A week’s travel to Dublin, County Mayo, and Limerick offers no basis for generalizing about dining in Ireland, let alone experiencing even a bare minimum of this beautiful, friendly country’s attractions. But I’ll do so anyway.
Let me start with a couple of surprises, one small and pleasant and the other sizable and puzzling: First, based on unscientific observation, there is at least one hot chocolate shop for every twenty or so pubs, which means that there are many, many hot chocolate shops. Second, it can be difficult to find a restaurant for dinner – not just because of traveling with a gang of picky eaters (I qualify, being vegetarian) – but because so many eating establishments close for the day at 5 or 6 in the afternoon. Breakfast and lunch places, in contrast, are ubiquitous. Indeed, the “full Irish breakfast,” of which more below, may be had around every blind curve in the road, of which more in an upcoming post.
Notably, nearly every pub, tavern, and restaurant prides itself on offering local, organic produce and Irish meat, with the farm of origin often specified on the menu. Vegetarians can find options almost everywhere, with a few caveats: (1) In some restaurants, “meatless” means only that a dish contains no beef, poultry, or pork – seafood apparently is considered akin to plant life. (2) Ask what base is used in preparing vegetable soup (which is on many pub menus), since more often than not the answer is “chicken.” (3) The “full Irish breakfast” is designed for carnivores, consisting largely of Irish bacon, sausages, fried eggs, and possibly scrambled eggs. It does include soda bread, rolls, and fruit (mostly apples), but if you’re vegan then protein is in short supply.
Be prepared to pay dearly for this good food. Ireland’s currency is the euro, and one euro currently is worth roughly $1.40. If the prices on menus were in dollars, you’d think the food was a bit pricey, but not outrageously so. Once you add 40 percent, you’re definitely in the outrageous category, at least by American standards.
As for the meal itself, expect leisurely service and a proliferation of waiters, waitresses, and servers. Once you order, your food will appear when it (or your server) is good and ready, and you may well have different people taking your order, bringing your appetizers, serving your meal, providing dessert, and at long last, producing the check, which generally will not appear until you ask for it. Once you have the check, you pay the cashier rather than your server in most establishments.
Then comes the most confusing part of the meal: leaving a tip. In cafes, you’re expected to leave some coins in a bowl by the register. In pubs, tips actually are frowned upon. And in restaurants, there’s the whole VAT issue – separately identifying a tip on a credit card slip apparently triggers undesirable (but unexplained) tax consequences, so you may need to ask your server to add the gratuity into the total charge without breaking it out. Some will and some won’t, in which case you’ll need to leave the tip in cash. At least the physical act of paying isn’t difficult; even the smallest pubs and bistros have hand-held credit card readers that accept American plastic even if it doesn’t have a chip.
Finally, two specific restaurant/pub recommendations, both in out-of-the-way places. In Westport, a charming town (a redundant description in Ireland) in County Mayo, we had a terrific lunch at The Pantry and Corkscrew Restaurant and Cafe. And in Kilfanore, which is in the Burren (County Clare), we loved our meal at Vaughan’s Pub, which the GPS providentially directed us to when we thought we were going to a different Vaughan’s Pub in the nearby town of Liscannor (gateway to the Cliffs of Moher).
Eat and enjoy!
PuffinlessTravel 