There’s so much the history books fail to tell you. When, as a child, you look at all those pictures of shop windows displaying signs to the effect that no Irish need apply, you’re likely to become outraged over America’s blatantly racist past. But now that I have been to Ireland, I know that those shop windows must all have belonged to restaurants and that the proprietors were right to be choosy about whom they chose as workers. You simply can’t allow Irish folk anywhere near food. Through careful observation, I have determined that Irish people’s skin sucks the flavor right out of any food from a distance as great as thirty-five centimeters. It’s not their fault, of course. They don’t consciously initiate the process. It’s just that they’re all so flavor-starved they can’t help themselves.

I actually think that’s what caused the potato famine of 1848—flavor-starved children walking barefoot over the potato fields. They sucked the flavor out of the burgeoning potatoes prematurely and brought on the blight.

Or perhaps an alternative theory about the great famine would be that the inhabitants of the country collectively lost interest in eating because it is, in Ireland, such a painful experience and because any time an Irish person presents anything in the way of food to someone else it is merely another glaring instance of man’s inhumanity to man.

Mrs. Sloucho and I were in Ireland from the 1st to the 12th of July last year. We were starving by the 4th. We tried to have a good time. We tried to enjoy things like the Rock of Cashel and the Cliffs of Moher and not to think constantly of the abundance of herbs and spices and—God yes!—condiments in our own kitchen back home. The worst food was easily in Dublin, as we tried a new restaurant for each meal for five consecutive days to no avail. The best food (not often good, but not as persecutingly flavorless as the Dublin fare) was on the coast. The only genuinely good meal we had in the entire country was at a tavern in the tiny town of Doolin.

Even when, around the 6th or 7th, we dropped into a relaxed and semi-euphoric sense of indifference to food—an awareness that the best way to approach the few days that remained to us would be as a sort of intermittent fast—we couldn’t stop talking about what we were going to eat when we got home. The only difference was that the feasts we conjured up in our minds were no longer tormenting. They were merely characterized by a certain desperation, a growing fear that food was not and could not be as good as we remembered, that chewing and swallowing must always have been a chore accompanied by a faint sense of nausea and interrupted by occasional prayers for death.

The Irish cook a piece of meat by warming it. Then they let it cool down while they heat the plate until it can’t be touched. It’s best to think of the heat in the oven as the marinade and the heat on the plate as the sauce. The Irish do not trust vegetables. Perhaps this distrust is grounded in the disappointments they’ve had from the potato. I don’t know. Most Irishmen have simply stopped associating with vegetables altogether. Occasionally, however, you’ll find one who bears an active grudge. He will incinerate them and use them as a sort of garnish cum obstacle—a piece of charcoal in the shape of a broccoli florette, for instance, that you have to keep your flavorless meat from touching.

When Mrs. Sloucho and I went to Florence, we misremembered our departure time and thought that we had to leave a day before we actually did. When we checked our tickets and learned that we had a whole extra 24 hours to explore the city, we were thrilled, delighted, ecstatic.

A similar sort of thing happened on our trip to Ireland. Somewhere along the way, Mrs. Sloucho started thinking that we would be in Ireland from the 1st to the 13th. She said it so much and so confidently that we didn’t even check the plane tickets. On the 11th, I became curious about what time we would be leaving on the 13th because that would impact which B&B we should stay in on the night of the 12th.

“Honey,” I said, puzzled.

“Yeah?”

“This says we’re going home the 12th.”

“That can’t be.”

“Here. Look at it.”

She studied the tickets warily, cocked her head, eyed them from a different angle, tried half-heartedly to use time zones to account for the confusion, and then muttered, “This means we definitely won’t get to Galway or Connemara.”

“I don’t think we’ll even make it to the Aran Islands,” I replied.

She took a deep breath. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“It can’t be helped,” I replied with a crocodile lump in my throat.

Then we simultaneously began a chant. “We’re goin’ ho-ome. We’re goin’ ho-ome. We’re goin’ ho-ome. Tomorrow we’re goin’ hoooooooooooome.”

In truth, we were a little bit happier about having one more day in Florence than we were about having one less day in Ireland.

But not much.

I’m a little ashamed to admit how happy I was to find out that we were returning a day early.

But not much.

I’m sure I’ll come to regret never having seen Inisheer or learned first-hand about bog-cutting and turf-drying.

But not much.

And I suppose there’s some truth in thinking that perhaps I’ll return—that something will take me to Ireland and let me finish seeing whatever it is that one is supposed to see there.

But not much. Not much at all. And if I do return, I will certainly take along a fully stocked spice rack.


Recommended: No

Best Suited For: Couples
Best Time to Travel Here: Mar - May