Dinner madness in rough times: Ireland

 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.

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."

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.