London and Ireland Trip, October 5: Dingle Food Festival
This was the view from our bedroom window on Saturday morning. (I have commented that there is hardly any better symbol of indefatigable optimism than an Irish clothesline.)
The teapot at breakfast came swaddled in this cute tea sweater.
Lori had the scrambled eggs with salmon.
I had the Irish fry; this was one of the better fries of the trip.
And then down to Dingle for the Dingle Food Festival.
I don’t remember the explanation of why there was a gypsy parade at the food festival.
The festival was one of the best food festivals we’ve encountered, because it had the Taste Trail. Seventy-five restaurants, shops, and food stalls were all selling small tastes of their various specialties for 2€ apiece. This meant that we were able to try a whole lot of places without becoming too horribly gorged. Even so, we did not managed to sample everything; we managed fourteen places on Saturday and about the same on Sunday. (There were also cooking demonstrations, workshops, music, and more, but the Taste Trail was the main thing for us.) It was touristy, certainly, but it felt to us as if it was catering to Irish tourists instead of international tourists. (Someone told us that this festival was a chance for the locals to relax a bit after the tourist season abated for the year.)
Crab Roll from Dingle Bay Hotel.
Mini burger and whiskey custard from Murphy’s Pub.
I’ve lost track of who supplied this cupcake for Lori:
Liam O’Neill Gallery offered “Traditional Dingle Mutton Pies with Derry Clarke from L’ecrivian restaurant, Dublin”. This might have been my first chance to dine on food prepared by a Michelin-star chef, but I didn’t like the mutton pie much.
Biscuit Cake from the Strand House
Murphy’s Ice Cream offered a lot of specialty flavors. All of them were good, but I remember particularly liking the Oats and the Cheddar Cheese flavors. Murphy’s was one of our favorite stops on the Taste Trail.
I’ve lost track of which flavors these were. My guesses (clockwise from top): butterscotch, oats, and Irish marmalade.
Tempted Strawberry Cider served in a frame shop. This didn’t live up to my mental image of strawberry cider, unfortunately.
Pizza from The Diner reflected an imperfect understanding of 50s diner culture.
I had never had periwinkles before. (Periwinkles are edible sea snails; these pictured are from Hannie’s.) Eating periwinkles involves probing the snail with a toothpick like a game of Operation in order to retrieve a crumb of meat the size and texture of a small pencil eraser. They weren’t horrible, but I discarded them as not worth the effort after less than half the serving.
The bacon and cabbage from MacCarty’s was outstanding. Far better than I expected from a rather ordinary bar.
Dick Mack’s is a haberdashery and bar. This combination might improve the process of shopping for men’s clothing. (They weren’t actually on the Taste Trail, I think.)
We took a break from the Taste Trail to see the beautiful Harry Clarke stained glass center at the Diseart Centre, a former convent. They didn’t allow pictures, of the windows; some pictures are available online at http://www.diseart.ie/visitor/harry3.html.
Foxy John’s (a hardware store plus bar; this sort of conversion is apparently a thing in Dingle) had samples of Annascaul Black Pudding, an award-winning artisan black pudding (and other breakfast meats). This was definitely qualitatively better than many of the other black puddings I had in Ireland, but it didn’t make me a black pudding lover.
Pumpkin soup from An Gallerai Beag.
Cones of chocolates from It Must Be Food.
I think this cupcake came from Deirdre’s Delights.
We hit Kennedy’s Butchers just as they (and the other shops on the Taste trail) were closing up for the day. The three sausages were excellent.
This meringue tea cake might have come from the Tree House Cafe. I’m not quite certain, though. I took notes of our destinations in one of the guides to the festival, and I’ve mislaid that guide. The guide is available online, but without our notes. I’ve managed to reconstruct most of our travels from a vague memory of our route, and the guide’s list of the foods served at each stop. The Tree House Cafe is next to Kennedy’s Butchers, which matches my remembered route - but the guide said that Tree House Cafe was serving something else, and I don’t see this meringue listed anywhere on the list. (Note from Lori: I bought that from the counter. It wasn’t a food festival thing, it was just a tea cake…and a LOT bigger than I thought it would be!)
After such a day of the Taste Trail, it was a bit tricky to figure out supper. We wanted something a bit more substantial; Lori in particular hadn’t eaten nearly as many tastes as I had. But we didn’t want much, and we felt that that a nice restaurant would be wasted on us. So we ended up returning to the Diner for garlic bread and pizza. This pizza was adequate, but I don’t think it would measure up in New York or New Haven.
We attended evening Mass at St. Mary’s. The service used a mixture of English and Gaelic, which made it very hard for me to follow.
Lori: I am a card-carrying Catholic. One of the beautiful things about Catholicism is the universality of the Mass. However, the occasional Gaelic mixed in with the English, and the thick accents of the Priest and congregation meant that I was often lost too, despite the fact that the responses are the same no matter where you go. We think some of it was simply that the accent gave everything a slightly different cadence and/or rhythm than what I’m accustomed to. Still, it was a beautiful little church made of stone, warm-toned wood, and stained glass, I enjoyed hearing parts of the Mass spoken and sung in Gaelic, and I was happy we went there for Mass.
After the Mass, we went seeking Irish music. Dingle is a famous town for Irish music, and we wanted to make the most of our opportunities while we were there. We never found Irish music that night, but we got one of the best stories of our trip. This photo may be as close to Irish music as we came that night - but the key to understanding this picture is to know that I do not play guitar.
What happened was this: as we were passing Bennett’s Hotel, Lori wanted to take a peek inside, because it was a venerable old establishment with a sumptuous entryway. When we poked our heads in, a guy at the bar enthusiastically beckoned us inside.
(I’ll call him Paddy, because he gave that as his name at least once.) It turned out that he and his (mostly silent) friend Jim had come from about thirty miles away looking for a session, and he had seen me and assumed from my appearance that I was a bluegrass player. Unfortunately, the closest I come to being a bluegrass musician is that my sister-in-law is an amateur fiddler. Paddy was not convinced despite our protestations, and it was at his insistence that we posed with his guitar.
We talked with Paddy and Jim briefly; I recall that Jim was a police officer, but I don’t recall any background about Paddy. They had no idea that the Dingle Food Festival was in town; they had just come to find a session the way they do once a month or so.
But Paddy’s attention soon drifted away from us to land upon Molly (definitely not her real name). Paddy started chatting with her with casual interest, but his conversation flourished wildly. Within ten minutes, he was introducing her to us as his girlfriend; within another ten minutes, he was asking to borrow Lori’s engagement ring so that he could propose to her. Molly did not seem to wholly reciprocate his infatuation; her responses were along the lines of “That’s not my real name; I’m not telling you my real name. I’m not going to marry you. I’m not even going to go to a different bar with you.” But Paddy was utterly undaunted and continued pouring out his adulations to his lady love. (This might have been creepy if she wasn’t enjoying it, but she was clearly having a fine time. After Paddy and Jim left, she told us her real name (which I’ve now forgotten) and told us that her cheeks were sore from laughing so hard.)
This is the picture Paddy insisted we take of the two lovebirds. It is one of our most memory-laden photos of the trip.
Paddy and Jim eventually unslung their guitars and started to start a session of their own, and were firmly told “no music here” by the bartender. They wandered off while we stayed to chat with Molly and her friend.
We walked a bit more looking for a pub with music, but the ones we found were full to bursting. We stood outside one pub listening to the music for a while, but it had been a day of a lot of standing and walking, and we went back to the B&B around ten.
The teapot at breakfast came swaddled in this cute tea sweater.
Lori had the scrambled eggs with salmon.
I had the Irish fry; this was one of the better fries of the trip.
And then down to Dingle for the Dingle Food Festival.
I don’t remember the explanation of why there was a gypsy parade at the food festival.
The festival was one of the best food festivals we’ve encountered, because it had the Taste Trail. Seventy-five restaurants, shops, and food stalls were all selling small tastes of their various specialties for 2€ apiece. This meant that we were able to try a whole lot of places without becoming too horribly gorged. Even so, we did not managed to sample everything; we managed fourteen places on Saturday and about the same on Sunday. (There were also cooking demonstrations, workshops, music, and more, but the Taste Trail was the main thing for us.) It was touristy, certainly, but it felt to us as if it was catering to Irish tourists instead of international tourists. (Someone told us that this festival was a chance for the locals to relax a bit after the tourist season abated for the year.)
Crab Roll from Dingle Bay Hotel.
Mini burger and whiskey custard from Murphy’s Pub.
I’ve lost track of who supplied this cupcake for Lori:
Liam O’Neill Gallery offered “Traditional Dingle Mutton Pies with Derry Clarke from L’ecrivian restaurant, Dublin”. This might have been my first chance to dine on food prepared by a Michelin-star chef, but I didn’t like the mutton pie much.
Biscuit Cake from the Strand House
Murphy’s Ice Cream offered a lot of specialty flavors. All of them were good, but I remember particularly liking the Oats and the Cheddar Cheese flavors. Murphy’s was one of our favorite stops on the Taste Trail.
I’ve lost track of which flavors these were. My guesses (clockwise from top): butterscotch, oats, and Irish marmalade.
Tempted Strawberry Cider served in a frame shop. This didn’t live up to my mental image of strawberry cider, unfortunately.
Pizza from The Diner reflected an imperfect understanding of 50s diner culture.
I had never had periwinkles before. (Periwinkles are edible sea snails; these pictured are from Hannie’s.) Eating periwinkles involves probing the snail with a toothpick like a game of Operation in order to retrieve a crumb of meat the size and texture of a small pencil eraser. They weren’t horrible, but I discarded them as not worth the effort after less than half the serving.
The bacon and cabbage from MacCarty’s was outstanding. Far better than I expected from a rather ordinary bar.
Dick Mack’s is a haberdashery and bar. This combination might improve the process of shopping for men’s clothing. (They weren’t actually on the Taste Trail, I think.)
We took a break from the Taste Trail to see the beautiful Harry Clarke stained glass center at the Diseart Centre, a former convent. They didn’t allow pictures, of the windows; some pictures are available online at http://www.diseart.ie/visitor/harry3.html.
Foxy John’s (a hardware store plus bar; this sort of conversion is apparently a thing in Dingle) had samples of Annascaul Black Pudding, an award-winning artisan black pudding (and other breakfast meats). This was definitely qualitatively better than many of the other black puddings I had in Ireland, but it didn’t make me a black pudding lover.
Pumpkin soup from An Gallerai Beag.
Cones of chocolates from It Must Be Food.
I think this cupcake came from Deirdre’s Delights.
We hit Kennedy’s Butchers just as they (and the other shops on the Taste trail) were closing up for the day. The three sausages were excellent.
This meringue tea cake might have come from the Tree House Cafe. I’m not quite certain, though. I took notes of our destinations in one of the guides to the festival, and I’ve mislaid that guide. The guide is available online, but without our notes. I’ve managed to reconstruct most of our travels from a vague memory of our route, and the guide’s list of the foods served at each stop. The Tree House Cafe is next to Kennedy’s Butchers, which matches my remembered route - but the guide said that Tree House Cafe was serving something else, and I don’t see this meringue listed anywhere on the list. (Note from Lori: I bought that from the counter. It wasn’t a food festival thing, it was just a tea cake…and a LOT bigger than I thought it would be!)
After such a day of the Taste Trail, it was a bit tricky to figure out supper. We wanted something a bit more substantial; Lori in particular hadn’t eaten nearly as many tastes as I had. But we didn’t want much, and we felt that that a nice restaurant would be wasted on us. So we ended up returning to the Diner for garlic bread and pizza. This pizza was adequate, but I don’t think it would measure up in New York or New Haven.
We attended evening Mass at St. Mary’s. The service used a mixture of English and Gaelic, which made it very hard for me to follow.
Lori: I am a card-carrying Catholic. One of the beautiful things about Catholicism is the universality of the Mass. However, the occasional Gaelic mixed in with the English, and the thick accents of the Priest and congregation meant that I was often lost too, despite the fact that the responses are the same no matter where you go. We think some of it was simply that the accent gave everything a slightly different cadence and/or rhythm than what I’m accustomed to. Still, it was a beautiful little church made of stone, warm-toned wood, and stained glass, I enjoyed hearing parts of the Mass spoken and sung in Gaelic, and I was happy we went there for Mass.
After the Mass, we went seeking Irish music. Dingle is a famous town for Irish music, and we wanted to make the most of our opportunities while we were there. We never found Irish music that night, but we got one of the best stories of our trip. This photo may be as close to Irish music as we came that night - but the key to understanding this picture is to know that I do not play guitar.
What happened was this: as we were passing Bennett’s Hotel, Lori wanted to take a peek inside, because it was a venerable old establishment with a sumptuous entryway. When we poked our heads in, a guy at the bar enthusiastically beckoned us inside.
(I’ll call him Paddy, because he gave that as his name at least once.) It turned out that he and his (mostly silent) friend Jim had come from about thirty miles away looking for a session, and he had seen me and assumed from my appearance that I was a bluegrass player. Unfortunately, the closest I come to being a bluegrass musician is that my sister-in-law is an amateur fiddler. Paddy was not convinced despite our protestations, and it was at his insistence that we posed with his guitar.
We talked with Paddy and Jim briefly; I recall that Jim was a police officer, but I don’t recall any background about Paddy. They had no idea that the Dingle Food Festival was in town; they had just come to find a session the way they do once a month or so.
But Paddy’s attention soon drifted away from us to land upon Molly (definitely not her real name). Paddy started chatting with her with casual interest, but his conversation flourished wildly. Within ten minutes, he was introducing her to us as his girlfriend; within another ten minutes, he was asking to borrow Lori’s engagement ring so that he could propose to her. Molly did not seem to wholly reciprocate his infatuation; her responses were along the lines of “That’s not my real name; I’m not telling you my real name. I’m not going to marry you. I’m not even going to go to a different bar with you.” But Paddy was utterly undaunted and continued pouring out his adulations to his lady love. (This might have been creepy if she wasn’t enjoying it, but she was clearly having a fine time. After Paddy and Jim left, she told us her real name (which I’ve now forgotten) and told us that her cheeks were sore from laughing so hard.)
This is the picture Paddy insisted we take of the two lovebirds. It is one of our most memory-laden photos of the trip.
Paddy and Jim eventually unslung their guitars and started to start a session of their own, and were firmly told “no music here” by the bartender. They wandered off while we stayed to chat with Molly and her friend.
We walked a bit more looking for a pub with music, but the ones we found were full to bursting. We stood outside one pub listening to the music for a while, but it had been a day of a lot of standing and walking, and we went back to the B&B around ten.