County Sligo has never had more to offer those who love food. Gone are the days when eating out meant eating indifferent versions of the traditional food of the region, like boiled bacon and cabbage, or Irish stew. In those days, food was not what visitors wrote home about, and one regularly heard tourists bolstering each other up with reminders that it was really the scenery and the music they had come for! Following that, a glut of fast food swamped the country, fast food that may – somewhere far away - have started life with international overtones, but which just turned into an indifferent version of other people’s traditional food and somehow missed the mark.
Happily, Sligo is now entering a period of slow food, slow food with relish. And that’s not the kind of relish that comes out of a jar, it’s the kind that makes you lick your lips! At last the glorious miles of sea that wash onto Sligo’s shores have come to mean something to those of us who no longer own a bucket and spade! They represent food that is so fresh it almost moves on your plate. They represent variety. They represent flavour. And they represent the increasingly recognised concept that local food is what everyone wants. Really, genuinely local. Local so that the waitress knows the fisherman, or the farmer, or the gardener who produced what you are about to eat. It’s not a transormation that’s going to happen overnight, but it will never happen at all unless the consumer cares, and asks, and is interested. Next time you go out to eat, ask where the ingredients came from! You might be surprised.
Happily too, Sligo – in some ways so delightfully remote from much of the world’s hurly burly – has also acquired some town polish. Many of Sligo’s own sons and daughters have travelled all over the globe and returned, bringing ideas and experiences with them, and many foreign nationals have been unable to resist the lures this fabulous county has thrown out to them, and have moved here lock, stock and barrel! It all makes for yet more variety, for higher expectations, for the mingling of influences and traditions. Judging by the growth of good food in Sligo this increasing internationalism is a bonus for the county.
So there is plenty of good food around, and restaurants in which to wine and dine and salivate over the menu. And of course, all the usual hot fads and fancies in the cheffing world. There are also lots of places that offer good, straighforward family dining with food that is as unpretentious as it is uncomplicated. There may be some places you’ll never want to go back to, others that you can’t recommend highly enough. When it comes down to it, food is very subjective and one man’s meat paste is another man’s foie gras – and neither might want to swap!
But what did happen to our national dishes? Can you imagine France or Italy without regional cooking? Did Irish stew and boiled bacon and cabbage curl up and die? Cooked to perfection, they are hard to beat! Perhaps the return of the hotpot will be the next phase in Sligo’s food saga. But there is one old favourite still out there, though – and I’d like to see anyone try and take that away.
Not hard to guess what it is either, or why it’s the national dish!
I mean, just think of all those potatoes. So many varieties, too, and all of them so versatile – boiled, roast, mashed… And then think of the miles and miles of coastline – men with boats rowing out through the waves to catch supper. Delicious fresh fish – and the chip emerging like some kind of divine inspiration to accompany it!
But there is something peculiar about fish and chips. It tastes diddley squat off a plate, eaten with a knife and fork. You can eat it like that if you want to, of course, but you’re missing out big time.
The way fish and chips are eaten by the cognoscenti is fresh out of a piece of newspaper, with your fingers burning on the plump, hot chips, the tang of salt on your lips, and – if you’ve a fancy – the astringent flavour of vinegar in the air! And the fish – ah the fish! Hot, steaming and succulent in the middle, pearly white when you break it open, covered in light, crisp golden batter that crunches ever so slightly when you bite into it! That’s the moment when the juices all run down your chin, and you lean forward to catch them in the crinkling paper packet that sits warm in your hand, and then the full aroma of this best of meals fills your nostrils and you find that you’re smiling! You can’t help yourself, because the taste of real fish and chips has just exploded on your tongue, and – you know what? – it’s just what you fancied!
Details of Restaurants in Sligo
