An American in Ireland

Two weeks ago a food blogger in Taiwan started serving a 30-day sentence for writing a critical review of a local noodle restaurant. Known only as Ms. Liu, the blogger wrote that the restaurant’s food was too salty, which led to the restaurant owner taking her to court for defamation. The judge sided with the owner and in addition to the jail time ordered Ms. Liu to pay NT$200,000 (4,900 Euros) in damages to the restaurant.

I imagine some restaurant chefs and owners are secretly celebrating this “victory.” The relationship between food bloggers – most of whom are amateur writers with little or no cookery school backgrounds – and restaurant owners has always been tenuous at best. Many chefs cite bloggers’ no-holds-barred critiques as nasty and irresponsible while bloggers say they’re merely doing the public a service by offering straightforward reviews. Both arguments are equally compelling.

Even in Ireland, where the social norm would be to quietly accept mediocrity rather than complain, I’m seeing a real uprising among food bloggers who are fed up with lousy food and terrible customer service in restaurants. A local vegetarian food blogger relayed her disappointment at the “nasty” comments she received from her waiter – who clearly wasn’t interested in her vegetarian-related menu questions – at a popular Dublin café. “Next time you have a veggie customer, I hope you treat them better than you treated me,” she warned. Recently CheapEats.ie “named and shamed” a Dublin restaurant for “appalling” service and then launched a week-long series outing a variety of other offending eateries. The feedback from readers was generally positive; they, too, were fed up with the lack of good service and conceded that it was high time blogs called restaurants out for it.

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While still in college I worked as a newsroom clerk at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the only daily newspaper for the northern California coastal town of – you guessed it – Santa Cruz. I made a whopping $8.88 per hour (big money back then!) and got to work alongside my best friend Cat, who worked as the assistant to the Editor in Chief, Tom.

One of Cat’s responsibilities was to read over all the letters to the Editor and select a few for Tom to review, comment on and publish in the paper. Tom would write his reply on a Post-It note, stick it on the original letter and leave it on Cat’s desk so she could type it into the system for publication.

I remember one letter in particular; it was was written in response to a photo we ran on a local Little League baseball team. The letter was from Kenny, the 8-year-old pitcher of the squad and apparently the paper ran a misspelling of his name. I just wanted to point it out but thank you for printing the photo, I am excited! Sincerely, Kenny. It was pretty adorable that the kid took time to write us the letter and Cat felt the same. She deemed it special enough to leave on Tom’s desk for a review.

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Nearly two weeks into being a Dublin resident, I’m still trying to get the hang of things around here. I remember going through a similar adjustment when I moved from Los Angeles to Drogheda in 2010, though back then I was utterly clueless about anything Irish whereas now I’m just trying to learn my way around a new city.

Of course I happened to move here right in the thick of the craziest week Dublin has ever seen. There’s Queen Elizabeth’s visit, her first EVER to Ireland, which is currently going on. Tonight is the UEFA final (football) and Saturday is the Leinster Cup final (rugby), and both are huge sporting events (so I’m told) and both in Dublin. On Monday, President Obama comes to visit for two days. All these events have Dublin on major lock-down: streets are closed off, public transportation is limited and there are literally 10,000 cops patrolling the streets.

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Funnily enough, strange but common side effects of fame can and often include a sudden loss of memory (like forgetting who your real friends are), a severe case of elitist behaviour and the onset of frequent temper tantrums. I’m from Los Angeles and believe me, this “disease” is practically an epidemic out there!

So it’s refreshing (and rare!) to see people who manage to find success and yet remain humble and kind, and Ireland’s own Donal Skehan is one such person. I first met him at the inaugural gathering of food bloggers in Ireland last year, and though he was one of the hosts and the author of a very popular blog and a new cookbook, he was incredibly down-to-earth and friendly. Well last week Donal released his second cookbook, Kitchen Hero (this time by a major publisher in the UK) and his new cooking show debuts on television in a few weeks – reasons enough to justify a marked change in attitude, if you go by LA standards.

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As I mentioned in my previous post, a lot has happened since I moved to Ireland one year ago. And through my adjustment to this country and its culture, there have been a number of people who’ve helped along the way. One of the most noteworthy is a lovely group of foodies who now have a name (Irish Foodies) and an official website: The Irish Foodblogger Association.

It was in May of last year that we gathered together for the first time, though back then we were all coming as individual food bloggers and not as a group. Bord Bia and Donal Skehan organized the first-ever meeting of food bloggers in Ireland, and though I had emailed with a few in the months leading up to the meet I had never actually come face-to-face with anyone but the Daily Spud (both being big sushi fans, we’d met up earlier for a Yamamori dinner). The first new face I would see was Kristin of dinnerdujour, who offered me a lift after she heard I lived nearby. Together we trekked up the M1 to Dublin to meet up with our foodie peers.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Though the Irish tend to wax ad nauseum about the weather, they don’t let it get them down. They don’t avoid going outside when it’s freezing cold or when it’s raining because if they did, they’d never leave the house. Irish people just put on a bigger coat, whip out the umbrella and get on with their lives.

Strangely enough, I’ve noticed as the temperature goes down people seem to get more chipper around here. In Dublin last weekend it was probably about 4 degrees Celsius (that’s 39 degrees Fahrenheit for all my American friends) and I witnessed the most cheerful exchange between a visibly shivering elderly man and a store clerk. The clerk asked, “How’s it going?” and while the old man could’ve gotten away with a smarmy remark he answered, “Ah, not a bother at all! Not a bother!” complete with a huge grin and a boisterous cackle. I think I was in the middle of whining about how cold I was when I caught that little burst of positivity. Then I passed the guy whose sole job is to stand in the driveway of the car park and wave cars in and out. For hours, he stands out there in the freezing cold, sporting his high-vis jacket and a genuine smile.

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There’s an air of excitement to something new; that just-discovered, fresh burst of possibility that fills one with a sense of hope and vigor. And that’s exactly the sentiment felt by those present for the introduction of the Irish Food Bloggers Association, a brand-spankin’ new organization formed by food journalist and blogger Caroline Hennessy and book editor and blogger Kristin Jensen.

The announcement was made at the Food Camp, an event that  – fittingly – made its debut at this year’s Savour Kilkenny Food Festival. The association, known simply as the IFBA, is the first of its kind. As food blogs in Ireland gain more exposure and popularity, its writers are finding a desire to connect and the IFBA offers a place for that. Here, bloggers can share everything from recipes and food styling tips to culinary event invites and hosting ideas. It’s also a place for food producers, restaurateurs, farmers and anyone involved in the food business in Ireland to link up.

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Roasted butternut squash on mixed greens with crispy shallots and sage leaves is pure vegan goodness

My hometown of Los Angeles can be a bit odd at times, to say the least. It’s not unusual to overhear someone at Starbucks place an order that would make even the most seasoned barista’s head spin: “Non-fat, half-caf, half-decaf, low-fat tall soy latte with one squirt of no-sugar vanilla syrup, extra hot and served in a grande-sized cup…to go.” It’s also quite common to see menu items that sound more like rabbit food than nourishment for humans, like macrobiotic sea cake with a side of millet or heirloom-varietal organic brown rice biscuits with honey and carob chips. In the health-conscious, model-and-actor Mecca of LA, people can be certifiably obsessed with what they put into their mouths, and restaurants and even Starbucks must cater to the oft-ridiculous requests of its customers if they want to stay in business.

In Drogheda, I get a double-take when I ask for low-fat salad dressing and I once got a cup of instant coffee when I asked for decaf at a local café (I sent it back). There aren’t a lot of choices around here, especially for people who want something healthy and/or beyond the average meat-and-potatoes fare. I imagine being a vegetarian in Ireland is about as unproblematic as being an alcoholic in Kuwait.

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All the ladies in the house say “Broomfield Festival!”

Ladies’ Night. The term has many meanings. For my generation, it usually means a night out on the town with your girlfriends involving – in this particular order – dressing up, dinner at a nice restaurant, a trip to the local hipster bar and way too many cocktails followed by a ruinous shot of some hideous liquor at last call. And if we’re being really bad, a visit to the local fast-food joint in an effort to stave off tomorrow’s hangover with copious amounts of greasy but deceptively delicious junk food. Occasionally, someone will get sick and, like true ladies, we’ll always hold her hair back while she pukes into a toilet. Can you think of anything more ladylike?

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a real ladies’ night, courtesy of the Broomfield Festival’s “Transform Yourself Beauty Extravaganza” at the local community center. Broomfield, an area in Collon about the size of a postage stamp, hosts a festival every year and the extravaganza evening of fashion/skincare tips/tea/etc. is one of its most popular events. Local shops display shoes, handbags, makeup and accessories at stalls around the main hall and tea and cake is served to all attendees. The main event includes a mini-fashion show, skincare presentation and a how-to on makeup application.

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Beautiful pork belly by Maire Dufficy

My friends and I are dining at a restaurant, and my starter of grilled tomato atop garlic-rubbed grilled bread drizzled with extra virgin olive oil with a dash of sea salt arrives. I say something about the beautifully ripe tomatoes and note the perfect grill marks on the bread before whipping out my camera (cue collective groan from friends) for a close-up shot of the dish. I snap away, taking breaks only to rearrange the food on my plate to get the perfect angle.

This type of pre-dining behavior is not appreciated by my friends. They even have a nickname for me – Nikon (pronounced knee-con here) as I’m hardly ever without my camera. So imagine my absolute glee when I walked into the Bord Bia offices in Dublin last week and saw a room full of camera-toting foodies – I could finally let my freak flag fly! The event, sponsored by Bord Bia (the Irish Food Board) and organized by cookbook author and fellow food blogger Donal Skehan was a day of photography, cooking demonstrations, lectures, and – of course – food! Needless to say, I felt I’d finally found “my peeps.”

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