Memories of Meals Past || Gathering as Nourishment
When Max and I first had the idea for this business, we could not possibly have predicted that we’d be launching it in the middle of a global pandemic. The last 18+ months have been a bit of a roller coaster for everyone. Sometimes it seems like just when things were starting to look up--we were lucky to safely travel to Ireland and had an incredible time in late September--they take a right turn. As I write, the number of covid cases in Ireland have skyrocketed, and health experts are telling people to avoid large groups and Christmas gatherings. Michigan, where we currently live, now has the highest rate of infection in the United States.
And yet here we are, planning and promoting international travel in the summer. We’re hopeful that we will get through this, and we are envisioning a whirlwind of travel as the light at the end of the tunnel.
Looking forward to 2022, we’ve been asking ourselves how we might be able to make your journey with us as special as possible, as well as doing a lot of thinking about what people are most looking for in a bespoke travel experience. What we’ve come up with goes beyond gorgeous castle hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, and the most delicious, deeply local food and drink Ireland has to offer.
The pandemic has made us appreciate how important it is to gather around the table with people we care about - with friends both new and old. These days, this is still a special and all too uncommon occurrence, and one that we value and cherish when we get the chance. Looking back, the memories that stand out most strongly aren’t necessarily the ones with the most technically precise food, but rather meals prepared with love and care and shared with great people.
In no particular order, here are some of the standouts:
A multi-course Basque tasting menu in West Belfast: A Basque friend of ours named Beñat invited us to his home for dinner and surprised us with an exquisite meal of traditional Basque foods. This was in about 2013, when Max was the chef at a restaurant called Roberta’s in Brooklyn, and I remember Beñat providing us with a disclaimer before the food: he wasn’t a professional chef like Max, so we shouldn’t expect the quality that we might be accustomed to. The reality was that he and his partner had put so much thought, care, and love into the food we shared that night that it was hands down one of the best meals we’ve ever eaten.
Salmon of knowledge dinner in Derry: I had a similarly mind-blowing meal in the home of a filmmaker friend named Margo in August of 2019. In my spare time, I’m an organizer for a collaborative Civil Rights solidarity exchange program between the cities of Detroit and Derry; and I was in Derry with a pair of elders from Detroit, and Margo had invited us into her home for dinner one evening. Like Beñat, she is not a chef, but she is an artist whose creativity and warmth shone through the meal she had taken all day to prepare. Together we shared a side of wild salmon en croûte; baked in a pastry shell, the fish was decorated with tiny pastry scales, many of which had little notes of inspiration tucked into them. Mine was from St. Francis of Assisi, and it read: “Start by doing what’s necessary and then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
Margo Harkin's Salmon of Knowledge.
Hyper-local Irish tasting menu at Michelin-starred restaurant Aimsir: We had the benefit of dining at Aimsir, in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, shortly after it opened in 2019. Aimsir is a fine dining establishment whose menu focuses exclusively on food that can be grown, harvested, fished, and foraged on the island of Ireland. The entire evening was incredible from start to finish, from the food to the hospitality. The staff was gracious and warm and professional, and the environment lacked the pretentiousness that many of their fancier American counterparts are famous for. While Max and I were thrilled with the 18 course tasting menu, the icing on the cake was the specialized 10 course tasting menu they created for our son, Alo. That’s right, we brought a (totally chill, well-behaved) four-year-old with us and they could not have been more welcoming.
Vibrant, colorful, playful, and delicious food at Kai: Hands-down one of our favorite restaurants on the entire island, we loved Kai in Galway so much that we went back for lunch the following day after our first dinner there. Chef Jess Murphy (also our collaborative partner for the Welcome to the West tour, no coincidence there) creates the kind of menu where you are confident that you can order anything and everything from it and know it is going to be an explosion of flavor. Every meal at Kai feels like a celebration.
Alo at Aimsir.
Smoked fish and aged shoyu at The Keep: Despite having had an incredible experience at Dede at the Customs House in Baltimore the evening before, we loved gathering around the table with Sally Barnes (our collaborative partner for the Wild West Cork tour) at The Keep at Woodcock Smokery, where we co-created our itinerary over a lunch of cold and hot-smoked tuna and aged shoyu. Sally has been smoking fish since the ‘70s, and is a font of knowledge about artisanal food, sustainable fish, and the state of our fisheries. What better way to appreciate the craft of a true artisan than by tasting their work with them, right in the workshop?
A gathering of old & new friends in Slane: We would be remiss not to include the incredible meal hosted by Jeni Glasgow and Reuven Diaz in their home on the Boyne Valley in late September of this year. Jeni and Reuven have impeccable taste and are generous in their hospitality, and also have the gift of making an incredibly delicious meal seem effortless. Our dinner was our first social dinner party with friends in about eighteen months, and as such was underpinned by a deep sense of gratitude and joy for the opportunity of being together.
Sally displays a tuna at the Keep.
What We're Reading:
Kate: Still working away on both fiction and nonfiction titles, but for a change of pace this week I thought I'd share that I'm working my way through a new cookbook called Italian American. I love to cook in my spare time, but for some reason this is the first time I've been inspired to attempt to make every single recipe! Recently published by the owners of Don Angie in NYC, the food makes me nostalgic for my home state of New Jersey. Although I have no Italian heritage whatsoever, I grew up around the types of food included in this book, and I'm having a great time (as no doubt are Max & Alo!).
Max: I'm finishing up The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich.
What We're Listening To:
Kate: Reading Damnation Spring has inspired me to add Greg Brown back into my rotation; the music reminds me of living in Northern California.
Max: Speaking of California, I've been enjoying listening to the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius XM--especially anything between 1974-1979.