No Fish Story

Growing up in Dublin in the 1950s, I was in love with Marlon Brando. I sent fan letters. I wanted him to come to Ireland, to fall in love with our country and with me. We would, of course, marry and live happily ever after. But I prayed he wouldn’t arrive on a Friday, as that was the day our house smelled of fish. You see, in those days you couldn’t possibly eat meat on a Friday or you would burn in hell. We crouched in fear of being somewhere away from home and eating meat on Friday inadvertently. And however badly we cooked meat, I can’t tell you what a disaster we made of fish.

Living as we do on a beautiful island whose seas, rivers, and lakes positively leap with gorgeous fish, did we cook nice fish for ourselves? No, we did not. Fish were meant to be a penance, and they were cooked penitentially. The fish we ate at home tasted like a big white hedgehog in a sauce. The fish we ate at school tasted like cod liver oil poured over a bed of spikes. We never ate shellfish because the fishermen didn’t like bringing them ashore in their nets and because they were hard to handle. If lobsters or clams or oysters did find their way in accidentally, they were sent straight off to those mad French across the water, who apparently liked them. I was sorry for the fishermen, worried about the sanity of those in other countries who ate fish from choice, and appalled when my uncles would take fishing rods and stand on the banks of rivers and lakes to wait for those horrid, dangerous things to bite.

None of my friends who were raised in Dublin recall having a truly tasty meal when they were young. We would go to each other’s homes for afternoon tea or Sunday lunch, but the dinner party had yet to arrive on the scene. And you certainly didn’t go to restaurants. That would have implied that you, or worse, your mother, hadn’t gotten it together to put a meal on the table at home.

Now we hark back to memories of our grandparents’ homes in the country, where there was always bread baking, and creamy milk, homemade butter, and vegetables grown just outside the kitchen window. Not to mention the chickens and lambs that we had probably been speaking to some days earlier. But we didn’t want to go back to all that. That was the past, the country, the time of poverty. Our own houses, in town, smelled of overcooked vegetables and boiled bacon and milk puddings. Our mothers loved shop-sliced bread and shop cake with hard icing on it.

But that was then, and this is now. Everyone believes that their own life has seen more change than anyone else’s. But truly I believe that my time and my place have seen more change than most. And now that God is no longer sending us messages about whether we can have a steak seven days a week or only six, we have discovered the joy of fish.

Suddenly, even Dublin’s simplest restaurants are offering crabs, mussels, and salmon, and the newspapers are full of recipes for new ways to cook with monkfish, lobster, Dover sole, and oysters. (The poor French have been very disappointed with their depleted supplies of Irish lobster and those other creatures that were once thrown back into the sea.) Our fishmongers have now assumed their rightful place in the sun, and we vie with each other to tell of a restaurant that has a new way with scallops or one that does an amazing bouillabaisse.

And this renaissance is not only about fish. We have finally learned that a country’s produce is often likely to be its strongest suit, and in Ireland we have magnificent potatoes, which we are learning to cook beautifully. It’s even common nowadays to discuss with the chef what kind of potato we will be eating—will that be a Rooster, a British Queen, or a King Edward?

Now, the Irish have their meat served rare rather than boiled to an unappetizing gray, and they enjoy salads. We also make very good local cheeses, such as Cashel Blue and Gubbeen. And we have made dramatic advances since those days when we ordered a “bottle of red wine” with dinner—not knowing about the clarets, Shirazes, and Pinot Noirs of the New World as well as of the Old. We have also discovered that the traditional breads that, decades ago, filled Irish homes with the smell of baking and nostalgia, still work their magic. And we haven’t been above embracing the new. Recently, in a smart Dublin restaurant, I asked the waiter if they had olive bread, and he said politely did I want green olive or black olive? It takes a lot to silence me, but I was wordless for a while after that.

How has this happened to my home city of Dublin, to Ireland in general? I suppose it has to do with affluence and travel and the demands of those who came to see us. First, in the early l950s, came the English, who were still undergoing food rationing after World War II and couldn’t believe how easy it was in Ireland to get real eggs and cream and thick steaks without having to mortgage the house.

Then came the visitors from the United States, intrigued by the simple homesteads their ancestors had left behind. How could 12 children have been raised in that tiny cottage? They were delighted with Ireland’s seemingly carefree, casual approach to life compared to the frenetic lifestyle of their own cities, but would sometimes become impatient when they tried to take their Irish relatives out to eat. Only the hotels seemed to serve food, and then not very imaginatively.

But by the end of the ’60s things had really begun to change. The Irish themselves had also started to travel abroad. And many of the greasy spoons that had served fried bacon and eggs to departing emigrants with their cardboard suitcases, off to make their fortune somewhere else, have disappeared, to be replaced by sushi bars, restaurants specializing in Northern Italian food, Greek and Thai places.

Nowhere is this truer than in my own neighborhood of Dalkey—an old, old town with a ruined castle and a working harbor—that nowadays is less a village, more a suburb of Dublin, just eight miles down the coast. If any stars come to Ireland now, it is Dalkey they head for. Happily, the Irish psyche took to the celebrity chef bit with gusto, and Irish chefs have become personalities, internationally known millionaires, and stars in their own right, catering on equal terms to the famous musicians, film directors, and race car drivers who flock to Dalkey these days. And we residents have benefited enormously from this.

One of the many awful things about being 15 and in love with Marlon Brando was that if eventually he had obeyed my fan letters and come to find me, I’d have had to welcome him to dullsville old Dalkey. Now I’m so proud of Dalkey that I’d love him to visit—though I am very happy in my life these days and I no longer want to marry him.

Maeve Binchy’s Neighborhood Notebook

Take the clean, comfortable, and reliable DART train from Dublin to Dalkey. For the return trip, ask the restaurant to order you a taxi.

Guinea Pig The Fish Restaurant
17 Railway Road
01-285-9055

You’ll be welcomed by Mervyn Stewart and his family, who will bring the catch of the day, uncooked, to your table and suggest many different ways of cooking it. My favorite here is Galway mussels followed by prawns in lemon butter.