Rebirth of Irish cuisine stirs up ballyhoo in dining circles

Nation's Restaurant News, May 31, 1999 by Bret Thorn

Although its culture is ancient, Ireland as a country is quite young -- having wrested independent rule from Great Britain only in 1921--and it is just now coming into its own in terms of self-image, according to Darina Allen of Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, Ireland.

"We're sort of a nation growing up, and it takes a while to shake off the inferiority complex that new nations have," says Allen, whose school is part of an ongoing renaissance of the cuisine of the Emerald Isle.

The results of that culinary rebirth have crossed the Atlantic and spread across the United States, where Ireland's druidic mysticism, doleful music, ironic humor and hearty beer are all the rage these days.

"Dublin has become a very, very cosmopolitan city," John Conolly, the 34-year-old chef and owner of Connollys Restaurant in Los Angeles, says of his hometown. "There's Indian food and Mexican food. When I was growing up, paprika was about as spicy as it got. All you did with garlic was kill a vampire. Now my brother in Ireland talks about using cilantro."

Not too long ago, Ireland was an impoverished backwater. But economic aid from richer neighbors and the attractiveness to investors of its well-educated, inexpensive work force has led to an economic flowering in recent years. Between 1993 and 1997 Ireland's economy grew by more than 9 percent a year, according to the Central Statistics Office. Cheaper transportation to and from mainland Europe also has led to an expansion in tourism and more opportunity for lush chefs to check out what's happening on the Continent. That has inspired a wave of "New Irish" cuisine that has had ripple effects here in America.

When Terry Dunne opened One and One in New York City's East Village, he hired classically trained Keith Korn to give the food some extra punch. Korn has cooked previously at the Four Seasons in Washington, Boston and New York as well as at Gordon in Chicago and New York's Monkey Bar. Dunne made sure his chef was up on the trends in Ireland by introducing him to a cookbook by Allen of Ballymaloe. "He got all the basics from it and just gave it his own twist," Dunne says.

Bubble and squeek, for example, is traditionally a dish of leftovers -- mashed potatoes, cabbage and whatever else is on hand -- named for the sounds it makes when it's reheated over the stove. "It was just put on the plate, and that was it," Dunne says of the traditional presentation.

But at One and One -- an Irish term for fish and chips -- Korn folds mashed potatoes and cabbage together with roasted garlic and Parmesan cheese, makes little fritters out of it and deep-fries it.

"I always thought bubble and squeak was English," comments Los Angeles restaurateur and Ireland native Gerry Gilliland. She admits, however, that the Irish stew recipe she brought with her from the Irish restaurant, Gilliland's, which she sold a year ago to open a more mainstream restaurant, Jake and Annie's, isn't authentic either.

"What we do is not a traditional Irish stew because Americans wouldn't like that," she says.

The real thing is a greasy affair involving a lamb bone boiled with potatoes and onions. "It's not something you would get in restaurants in Ireland," she says. Instead, she braises beef in Guinness with carrots, parsnips and rutabagas.

At New York's Tir na N6g, Matthew Geraghty, a New York native who worked with Charlie Palmer at Aureole and then opened The Lenox Room with him, uses his French training to take the peasant out of traditional bangers and mash, the Irish version of sausages and mashed potatoes.

"What I try to do is use Irish products and give them a New York twist," he says.

Geraghty's "bangers" are served with a sauce of caramelized onions and red-wine reduction. The sausages are served radiating out from a mound of mashed potatoes, which are garnished by a vertical "herbed chip": A couple of herb leaves are placed between two large, paper-thin potato slices, which are baked with a weight on them to keep them flat. "It looks like stained glass almost," Geraghty says.

That kind of presentation isn't exactly what Allen says she's trying to do with Irish food, nor is it what she says her mother-in-law, Myrtle Allen, had in mind when she opened the restaurant that took Ireland by storm.

"She was a fanner's wife who had wonderful produce," recalls Allen, who began working in Myrtle Allen's kitchen in 1969. "She decided she wanted to open a restaurant in her own house. At the time it was considered an absolutely ridiculous thing to do [although such restaurants are now thickly scattered across Ireland]. But within a couple of years she had the top rating in the British Isles."

Myrtle Allen had no formal training, and she made her menu daily, according to what was available. The focus in Darina Allen's cooking school, following Myrtle Allen's lead, is to use the excellent raw materials that Ireland has to offer, ranging from salmon and beef, lamb and cheese to seaweed and nettles.

"It's peasant food and should be served thus," Darina Allen adds. "It shouldn't be too tarted up."