Poor Ireland. After centuries of hard toil and poverty, the country
had almost made it. They were the "Irish tiger" in record time
transformed from one of Europe's poorest countries to one of the
richest. Finally could the common Irish also enjoy life in the top
circle of paradise, where you are not working on something special, but
live on a mixture of derivatives, equities, financial incentives and
government transfers. Then the bubble burst. "We've gone from being the
Celtic Tiger to an era of financial uncertainty, just as suddenly as the
Titanic shipwreck, cast from the comfort and luxury to the uncertainty
of the cold sea," wrote the Irish Times in an editorial full of mixed
metaphors, and poor in self-knowledge.
Could one have predicted
that something like this would happen? That Ireland would feel the
distress and misery again? The scholars disagree. Perhaps it was just
bad luck that they lost so heavily through the lottery of the marked? Or
perhaps is it that Ireland will always be punished, as they have been
by the English and the potato blight in the past? The problem is that
financial models only move upward, until the recession is coming, and
everyone admits that it was inevitable and predictable.
On the food side, there was certainly little doubt that the downturn
may come. I knew it - or should have understood it - as early as 2001,
when I got the cookbook "Elegant Irish Cooking." After a long period of
over ten per cent annual growth in GDP the Irish chefs was finally ready
to present what the "new Ireland", the suddenly wealthy island state,
had to offer.
The book is a grim warning. With a
leased racing-car and vast quantities of butter and cream, the authors
attempt to escape from large parts of Irish history, from nature, and
from the food you have eaten on the island for hundreds of years. Here
are the chefs in extra tall hats, with newly combed hair and exquisitely
mustaches that presents the worst of what the end of last century had
to offer: Veal fillet with asparagus soufflé and kiwi-and-gin sauce, pan
fried salmon fillet with grilled peppers and pineapple-compote, tomato
mousse on a bed of black olives and balsamic vinegar.
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| Is this Irish cooking? |
With touching pride the chefs are photographed next to the polished
brass plate that proclaims their restaurant has been accepted in
exclusive clubs for people who deal in luxury.
Irish food has
always been about two things: On the commodity side, it was about
cabbage and potatoes, and so much lamb or pork as you could afford.
(Oddly enough, for an island, not so much about fish.) Simple food, yes,
but by no means bad food. It is food that satisfies, food you can
understand, and just eat without any need to explain "what the concept
is all about."
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| The basic is often the best |
The other thing about Irish food, is the
hospitality. Because the food is simple and eaten in an informal
environment, Ireland has had a hospitality culture that has been world
class. The food is to be eaten on a wooden table in a crowded pub, not a
restaurant where they have flaxen tablecloths. "We may not be rich, at
our table there is nothing you can not see, or anything anybody can not
afford. But nowhere in the world you will have a nicer time. " And
perhaps that is where it all went wrong, with tall hats and towers that
float around in clouds of foam on the plate? The financial crisis has
certainly affected the restaurant industry hard.
Even hardcore
market liberals know that the key to success is to cultivate their
relative competitive advantage, not just to mask their weaknesses. Every
week, new sites that specialize in food in the tower fan and blob-like
foam close down. While the pub on the corner filling up. For in the same
way that Swiss is better to be bankers, and the French better at their
haute cuisine, there is no better than the Irish to make guests feel
welcome and to forget their sorrows.
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