The Wok Inn || Irishness || Galway & Connemara
"The past is a country from which we have all emigrated."
-Salman Rushdie
Years ago, I traveled to Ireland with my father to see where he grew up, in a town called Tullamore, in County Offaly, about forty-five minutes west of Dublin. The McCabe family lived in the town, on Barrack Street (the Garda station just a stone’s throw away). My grandfather, Aloysius, for whom our son is named, was a tailor; my grandmother, Louisa, baked cakes. Some time after the McCabes left, their street was renamed Kilbride, and the small, attached cottage in which the family of five lived had become a Chinese takeaway restaurant called The Wok Inn.
Behold: the ancestral family home in Tullamore.
Rebecca Solnit describes Ireland in the sentimental tourist’s imagination as insufferably cute--and my dad’s house is indeed that; just look at the window boxes! You can almost smell the peat burning when you look at the picture. “Cultures, after all, evolve and change,” she writes, “but tourists often want an unchanged version of the past.”
To the contrary, while I certainly did not expect a Chinese takeaway in my father’s childhood home, I remember thinking it was pretty cool. It did make it more difficult to visualize the existing commercial kitchen as the small yard and the facilities that were once out back (they had no running water in the main house, which was typical at that time). I loved the idea that, in the time since the McCabes left to pursue economic opportunity in America, a Chinese family had come to Ireland in search of the same thing.
Growing up with an immigrant father, I knew enough about Ireland and the way it has changed over the years since my father left that I was not a nostalgic or sentimental tourist looking for a sanitized version of the simple life they believe is standard for Irish people. And yet those sanitized versions of Ireland are ever-present within Irish America. Even as Ireland becomes more diverse and multicultural, there are groups who would like, as Solnit describes, “to narrow down the definition of Irishness or [see] it in nostalgic soft focus, freed from the complexities and contradictions of Ireland as a real place.”
[I am reminded, here, of a fantastic video called “What does ‘Irishness’ look like?” produced in 2018 by Ola Majekodunmi, an Irish freelance journalist, writer, presenter, and Gaeilgeoir. The video is a short documentary which asserts that there is no one way to be Irish using personal stories from Irish people who are often questioned about their identity.]
This idea of Ireland as a real place, as complex and perhaps contradictory to preconceived or outdated notions of what it is really like to live and eat there, is part of what inspired us to start Bog & Thunder. The genesis of our name speaks to this very issue, and was inspired by a quote from another woman writer. Maeve Brennan was a 32-year-old Irish immigrant when she began writing for The New Yorker and had no time for “the bog and thunder variety of stuff that has been foisted abroad in the name of Ireland” in her work. While we like the sound of Bog & Thunder, we adopted that name as a way of turning Brennan’s phrase on its head. We aim to add a touch of humor and playfulness to our work, in addition to emphasizing the types of experiences that travelers would not expect to find in Ireland.
That’s not to say we won’t be enjoying pints of Guinness and eating shepherd's pie at a pub while wearing Aran sweaters, of course! We also love the food and drink Ireland is already known for, like butter and roasted lamb and whiskey. What it does mean is that we will also eat incredible Palestinian food made by former asylum seekers, catch our own breakfast from the sea, take a cooking class from an Irish Mexican woman, or eat an entirely local feast al fresco overlooking a Neolithic passage tomb.
Our first tour for the 2022 season, Welcome to the West: Planting Roots in Galway & Connemara (June 21st to 26th), combines the ingredients of food, immigration, and multicultural Ireland to create a full-flavored experience unlike any other you’ll find on the island of Ireland. Our collaborative partner for the five day tour is the celebrated chef Jess Murphy, owner of the restaurant Kai on Galway’s Sea Road. Jess is an immigrant from New Zealand, and when she is not in the kitchen or working on her forthcoming cookbooks, you’ll often find her working alongside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to welcome asylum seekers to Ireland.
Our tour will feature the diverse producers and suppliers who make Galway the culinary capital of Ireland, many of whom are also immigrants playing a key role in the Irish food system. Jess will introduce us to some of her suppliers and we’ll meet the growers, fisherfolk, and foragers that supply the West Coast of Ireland. We’ll get to know the people that make it all work behind the scenes, and have exclusive tastes of the freshest ingredients before they hit the table in Ireland’s best restaurants.
What We're Reading:
Kate: I'm reading Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson, which is about a family living in a logging community in northern California in the '70s. The book is right up my alley, seeing as how it is about how far a family and a community will go to protect their future (most likely quite far). I lived in northern California for a brief spell in a former life and this story is really making me miss those redwoods.
I'm also reading a book called How Not To Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, by Gareth Higgins. This book was recommended to me by Ari Weinzweig (Thanks, Ari!). The book is, in part, about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and one another, and about the power inherent in changing our perspectives. I'm less than halfway through, but on page 65 I read something that really hit home for me. It's already making me think about a particular version of my own story, as well as a few of my creative projects in new ways. It's very, very good so far.
Max: I'm still enjoying The Dawn of Everything. I also recently purchased The Joy of Pizza, by Dan Richer, the chef at Razza in Jersey City. I have a pizza pop-up called @PizzaReplicator and I really enjoy reading about making bread and pizza in my spare time.
What We're Listening To:
Have you had a chance to check out the BBC's Slow Radio podcast yet? I first learned of it from a Twitter mutual, and it is very peaceful and relaxing. "A lo-fi celebration of pure sound" is how they describe themselves; it's a combination of music from around the world alongside sounds from nature. It's the perfect background music for reading or taking a bath.
A handful of McCabes on the day they became American citizens. L to R: My father Séamus, grandfather Aloysius John, grandmother Louisa, Aunt Kathleen, and Uncle Pat. Aren't they gorgeous?