SOUNDTRACK: BASIA BULAT-“The Shore” (2010).
I loved Basia Bulat’s “In the Night” which wa s fun, uptempo folk rocker. “The Shore” is a hauntingly beautiful, wistful ballad. “In the Night” featured the autoharp as its main instrument, but “The Shore” features the pianoette as its sole instrument (on this recording anyway, I haven’t heard it on the record).
Listenin to the song is great, a wonderful expereicen. But once you watch her play it, the song is even more powerful. This video in particular is enchnating–where is this beautiful open room? How did she learn to play the pianoette? What is that little hammer she’s using? Is anyone not blown away the first time she hits a string for multiple notes and the song goes from simple to majestic?
And what do you suppose uwolnijmuzyke means? I don’t know, but it’s a really cool music site from Poland.
Pretty good, huh?
[READ: July 13, 2011] Dining with the Tiger
I wasn’t going to talk about this “review” either. But several things stood out for me: John Banville! It’s hard to pass on him. I also seem to be talking a lot about food this week (what with Will Self, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Lucky Peach in general). And because I have to wonder if my friend Lar knows of any of restaurants that Banville mentions (now that he is a landed, married gentleman and not the post-graduate guy who would take an American mate to an “American” diner on Grafton Street–which was lorryloads of fun, make no mistake).
So Banville gives a brief run through of the state of Irish restaurants circa the end of WWII–as in, there were none. Then came the 1990s and the critical moment in Irish culture–the scandal of Bishop Eamon Casey and his unexpected son. The scandal seemed to rock the country, but mostly it made them let fall the shackles of conformity across the country. Banville suggests that such a major event could have shaken a Catholic country to the core, but in Ireland, it seems to have just woken everyone up to the possibility of making money.
The early Nineties were the first ever attempts at cuisine in Dublin (And I’m going to mention establishments just to see if Lar knows/knew of them: Polo One off Molesworth St (now called Pico One) which gets the wonderful descriptor: “a delicious little lunch of flambéed five-pound notes lightly drizzled with small change.” The chef Johnny Cooke then went on to open Cooke’s Cafe. Other fine places included: Shay Beano, Thornton’s (up the canal) and The Tea Room at the Clarence.
And then came the Celtic Tiger! And dining patrons begat new restaurants which begat new patrons which begat new restaurants (like Mint in Ranelagh). Of course, we know where the Tiger went (and that it ate all of the restaurants too (except Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud–which has seen and survived almost as many recessions as it has served hot dinners–and Juniors (on Barth Avenue).
Despite the Tiger (or perhaps the Tiger is raising it’s head again?) there are a few new restaurants poking up: Pichet in Trinity Street, and Cafe H (where Johnny Cooke has come home to roost).
This doesn’t make for a very good review; nonetheless, it was a really fun read and a hint that I should read more Banville.
For ease of searching I include: flambeed
I Just Read About That... 
Still haven’t read the original piece–must look harder.
The restaurant scene in Ireland reflects greatly the Celtic Tiger and for me begins about ten years ago when I stopped going to places like Captain America’s (we called it Captain Ahab’s) because I had more money and was finally courting a girl who didn’t turn up her nose at anything different from the traditional fare offered in places like the above, and who didn’t order a pint of lager with her main course.
I’d eaten in very nice places, mind; I ate in Patrick Guilbaud’s when it was located behind the then-Bank of Ireland offices on Baggot Street, before its move to the current Merrion Hotel location. They very discreetly moved to our table during coffee to tell my host that his car had been broken into. Very classy. I’d also eaten on several occasions in Thornton’s when it was on the Canal—we brought the then-President of the University of Scranton there in the mid-90’s and we all had a lovely time. It was a small, intimate place then, with a maitre d who went on to open a splendid wine bar and restaurant called Dax (to which I’ve just this minute decided to bring my wife this week). I’ve since got to know the owner through some work he did where I work. Nice bloke. Kevin Thornton got two Michelin stars a few years back and then lost one, at which point he announced his intention to keep doing what he did and to stop trying to satisfy their rigours at the expense of his own interests.
Kevin and his wife Muriel are in it for the joy of food—if you care to look at the photos he’s got on his website and in the coffee table book he published (www.thorntonsrestaurant.com/photography/) you’ll see he has a real passion for it, and the food is terrific. The tasting menu in Thorntons, now located on St. Stephen’s Green, is an unforgettable highlight of eating in Dublin. The other side of the food industry in Celtic Tiger Dublin is best discussed, though, through the machinations of two figures.
Conrad Gallagher was 26 (I think) when he got his first Michelin star at his restaurant Peacock Alley. He’s 39 now and has had quite the chequered life—cooking for Bill Clinton in the White House in 1998; losing his restaurant and being charged with stealing three paintings from the Fitzwilliam Hotel, where it was located, in 2002 (not guilty, it seems). He relocated to New York in 2002 and was declared bankrupt in South Africa in 2009, returning to Ireland to start again.
A flash character, he’s recently to be found on a succession of TV cooking programs, looking stern. And most recently in the Irish Times, which reported last week that Gallagher, notorious for failing to fill out any tax returns despite employing over 250 people at one stage in the early 2000’s, has begun winding up the two restaurants he owns in Ireland now. There is one in Dublin and one in Sligo—a reporter found creditors removing the sign from the front of the one in Sligo because it hadn’t been paid for as the lunch course was beginning one afternoon—and neither are registered to him. They’re in the names of his wife and mother, with Gallagher nowhere to be seen on the board of directors and no VAT returns filed, it seems. Another nice little story has a protest in support of a migrant worker organised outside his Dublin restaurant in early July unless Gallagher paid €1400 for services previously paid for with a bounced cheque. He paid up. He described rumours of his imminent bankruptcy as ‘complete and utter crap’ in this Saturday’s Irish Independent, but there is a recession on….
Which takes us to Mint, a restaurant opened in Ranelagh, Dublin in the mid 2000’s by one Dylan McGrath, an ambitious young thing intent on getting his star in the first year his room was trading. He did well—we ate there one evening and at several lunchtimes and it was wonderful—and his restaurant rapidly became very fashionable indeed, not least because of the buzz surrounding the enfant terrible that was Master McGrath. The effort to get a Michelin star was documented in the RTE series The Pressure Cooker, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPQDkXKhuMI) which showed a rather ugly side to McGrath’s ambition as he berated and fired a succession of lackeys in his tiny kitchen. On one occasion at lunch there, sitting at one of two occupied tables, my boss and I sat through the embarrassed shrugs of maitre d’ and waiters alike as McGrath had a blazing row just through the open kitchen door with one of his suppliers—it was as if it was a floor show available as part of the service. It wasn’t nice and I didn’t go back. Great tuna carpaccio with chickpeas, though. And the selection of rhubarb dishes I had for dessert there one night was both the most beautiful and most delicious course of food I’ve had anywhere.
Allegations of exploitation and racism followed and he became something of a pariah, even after getting the elusive star. The whole mink-coat-no-knickers ambience of this type of eating, where new money got you at a table with a variety of exotic foams and dishes activated by pouring some sort of broth over them, came to be seen by the average Dubliner as very shallow indeed. A friend in the industry told me that McGrath and his backers were losing €40,000 a month in early 2009, trying to keep Mint open once the star had been awarded; it was an early casualty of the dip and is now a franchised gourmet burger emporium. McGrath has done much less media of late, opening a new place called Rustic Stone closer to the centre of town.
His star may well ascend again—he’s shut up a little and his food is admittedly good—but he always seemed to me to epitomise the cocksure, possibly coked up attitude with which anyone dealing with Celtic Tiger cubs had to deal. Gallagher and McGrath are two sides to it, and one can be sure that both boys will live through it and climb the ladder once again.