Dinner: Porterhouse Reprise

Originally posted on Posterous, May 6, 2012

We'd take Porterhouse home to St. Louis if we could—lacking any good way of doing it, though, we content ourselves with another meal there. This time, we don't waste time on sampler-sized drink; Tom gets the Irish Red, and I opt for the oyster stout. The place is nearly full to capacity, so we're up on the third floor this time, at a table next to a huge copper still, which has been given a new life as a piece of furniture. The ceiling above it is also polished copper—incredibly beautiful. Through the window, we can watch a mother magpie feeding her nestful of babies, and watch the traffic about on Parliament Street.

The view inside is just as interesting: tonight, there's a female academic from Chicago loudly holding forth at a table otherwise full of students from the UK, who don't seem to have been to the US. This poses no problem, since the lady possesses the ability to chatter (loud, quacking voice) without any need to draw breath. She gives St. Louis a pasting, and pours scorn over Omaha—neither, according to her, is as stellar as Chicago...though I greatly wonder at her need to inform a tableful of intelligent people that Lakeshore Drive actually runs along the shore of Lake Michigan. I've nearly decided it would be worth whatever punishment assault gets, here in Dublin, for the pleasure of dumping my beer over her head, when we notice the two French girls (dark, exotically pretty) at the next table seem to think as little of Suzy Chicago as we do.

While I'm most sincerely sorry to note that the prettier of the two is drinking bottled Corona—surely a punishable offense here!—they're interestingly intense and expressive. Their conversation is fast and emphatic,and, while I haven't had French since high school, it doesn't take any doing at all to understand "Ce soir? Avec lui??? JAMAIS!!!"

Dinner arrives just about then: fish and chips for me, a Porterhouse pie and salad for Tom. The pie is a cute little thing, perhaps 5 inches across and1.5 inches deep, browned so dark its surface is nearly black. It's filled with chunks of very tender beef and a few veggies in a thick brown gravy. Fairly highly flavored with onion, it's delicious—so much so that the bite I do get I swipe while Tom is covertly eyeing the French girls. (Cherche les femmes, messieurs!) The beer for both of us was the Oyster we'd had the last time we were here.

My fish is a huge slab, elegantly enrobed in a golden batter. It's fried crisp, with no oiliness clinging to it, and the fish inside is moist, flaky perfection. It's perched on a huge pile of chips, thick-cut—gold-crisp outside, and mealy-good within. A full quarter of a lemon arrived with it, and, squeezed over fish and potatoes, it's the final touch required for dining delight.

There's a small pot of traditional British 'mushy peas' next the fish. These are the mushiest I've ever seen; perhaps the descriptor should have been 'mushed peas.' But they taste good, and I get around them in record time. I've also got a portion of salad—greens, garnished with slivered carrot and a splash of vinaigrette. The greens look alarmingly like dandelion leaves, and have a distinctive, spicy taste, and the counterpoint they make with the fish is stunning.

We have room to split a dessert, and opt for the bread-and-butter pudding. This is no dodge to use up stale leftovers—the bread is a challah-like triumph of the baker's art. It would be a proud addition to any Sabbath table, so, as a foundation for bread pudding, it has no rivals. Dense, sweet, and yellow with eggs, it's enhanced, rather than disguised, by caramel and chocolate sauces, cinnamon, and a handful of sultanas. A restrained scoop of caramel ice cream and halved strawberries complete the presentation, and it's so rich we can hardly finish it. Good? 'Good' describes this dish in the way a candle would be suitable metaphor for the blazing noonday sun. It was awesome, fantastic, magic.

Followed by a walk home across Temple Bar, it was perfect.

Dinner: Porterhouse Brewing in Temple Bar

Originally posted on Posterous, May 2, 2012

Tonight's feast was courtesy Porterhouse Brewing in Temple Bar. All-wood, graffiti-carved tables, with what looked like a painted tin ceiling, I loved the atmosphere—I wouldn't have been surprised to see either Johnson or Pepys walk in; instead, we shared the space with well-mannered tourists, college kids, and one heavy-set lady in a thoroughly incongruous Che Guevara t-shirt. The sound system was playing good vintage rock: early Beatles (Day Tripper), Stones (Satisfaction), Black Sabbath (Paranoid), and Alice Cooper (Lace and Whiskey).

We started with a taster round of three light and three dark brews, all house-made, and on tap.

Lights: 
An Brainblasta
Thick, almost chewy. Moderate hops, with a long, bitter finish. Nice, round maltiness beneath. This was GOOD, and I'll be back for more.

Turner's Stickelbract Bitter
Very hoppy, but just a little bitter. Not much malt evident, and it seemed a little watery. In fact, it disappeared entirely with food.

Porterhouse Red
Good aroma, nice creamy head, good balance between hops and malt. A little thinner than the O'Hara's we had two nights ago, but still good.

Darks:
Oyster Stout
Not much aroma, but a nice, velvety head. Smooth and creamy, and the malt comes in after, lingering on your tongue. It's light, but good; a little sweet, and held up to food best of the three darks.

Plain Porter
Fluffy head, bitter. Faint hint of coffee; lingering bitter finish. Good, but not as sophisticated as the Oyster.

Wrasslsr's XXXX Stout
Dark, fluffy head—VERY malty. Lingering bitterness, not as creamy as the Oyster, but very good all the same.

The accompanying meal was pork and leek bangers (that's sausages, to the uninitiated) with mashed spuds.

The bangers were crisp outside, moist inside—very good!—and the potatoes were real, with unabashed lumps. The whole thing was doused with a fantastic beer-and-onion gravy, and served up in a huge Yorkshire pudding. Best of the beers to go with it were the Red and the Oyster. I found, when I got down that far, that the gravy had soaked into the pud–so I ate that, too, faux pas or not.

Dessert? Irish coffee chocolate mousse, flavored with Jameson's. A whipped cream base, well-flavored with chocolate, coffee, and whiskey, it arrived garnished with strawberry halves, sticky chocolate sauce swirled on the plate beneath, and grated chocolate on top. Good? Try 'stellar,' and you'll be close. We followed it with a glass of Greenmore Single-Grain, eight years old. Very smooth it was, with a hint of caramel, and no peat—traditional in Irish whiskey.

I would have happily sat there all night, tasting my way through the 15 or 20 whiskeys listed on the menu, and maybe having a second dessert. Too full, though—we'll have to come back.

Dinner: Bull and Castle

Originally posted on Posterous, May 1, 2012

We've passed the Bull & Castle Gastropub in Lord Edward Street several times a day since we arrived, and, since it was between Christchurch and the flat, it seemed a good prospect for the evening. The interior is dark, with wood panelling, a dark wood back-lit bar, and lots of small tables, each with a candle. Very inviting, as was the bill of fare. We both opted for seafood: I chose the seafood pie, and Tom the mussels and chips. We ordered an 8-beer taster to start, and, since we were unfamiliar with the local brews, we let the waitress choose for us. What arrived was:

Galway Hooker
Never mind the name—it's a reference to a traditional sailboat, folks. This is an Irish pale ale, very malty, lightly hopped. No added chemicals, apparently, and they take something like 6 weeks for fermentation. I'm not generally a fan of pale beers, but this was good.

Buckleys Golden Ale
This one's from Carlow Brewing. It's got a reasonably malty scent and taste, and enough hops to leave a bright, bitter finish. It's drinkable, though unremarkable, rather reminiscent of lager, truth be told.

Carrig
Maltier than the IPA (see below), and not too hoppy—it's OK, but undistinguished. Mostly, this one brought to mind the old Hobgoblin beer tag line, "What's the matter, lager boy? Afraid you're gonna taste something?" It's better with food than alone, but I wouldn't go to the effort of crossing the street to drink it again.

Dark Arts
Disappointingly watery, for a dark beer. Fuggedaboudit.

O'Hara's Irish Red
Malty and caramelly—not too heavy, with an almost molasses-y bottom note. Sweet, toasty, and gloriously ruby-colored, this one was the pick of the litter, far and away the best of the evening. It's reasonably full-bodied, with a scent as good as its taste.

O'Hara's Stout
This was the last glass we got to, so it sat for nearly 25 minutes undisturbed. Nevertheless, it still had a good head to it—I definitely approve. Mild, but good, and nicely dark, it turned out to be even more malty in aftertaste than going down—bravo, O'Hara's, this is excellent! It's balanced, with an understated, mild hopping, and good body. If I can't find this in the States, I'm gonna cause the biggest uproar the local beer purveyors have ever seen!

O'Hara's IPA
Hoppy & a little bitter, but not aggressively so—lighter than I'd normally drink, but good. Almost spicy with food, and no longer bitter. This is one I'd definitely keep around for hot summer weather.

Metalman
This one was slightly malty, but watery—NOT a fan. It tasted a little sour with food, too. No, thank you!

There were two academics at the next table: chemists discussing thermodynamics, material science, chemistry, and a hapless grad student called Robbie. It seems Robbie should use Sean's code, rather than start from scratch. It really was hard to eavesdrop discreetly, so close to the bone was the conversation. Our older son, Christopher, also a grad student, has been fighting other parts of the collaboration to re-write some code that's so abysmal it actually impedes the group's research. No one wants to agree, because it's what they've ALWAYS used. Never mind that Christopher is willing to take the time to do the job better.....

Pity the long-suffering grad student, folks. He (or she) is expected to work 24/7/365, for a pittance, and make miracles happen for the profs.

Over beer and fish and chips, these guys argued their way through steady state, microscopic connections, and the eutechtic transformation. It was fascinating to hear their opinion of how their national labs work, compared with how ours do.

Though the fish and chips at the next table looked very good, I hardly know where to start about the humbly-named seafood pie. It arrived hot as the hubs of hell, a vat of it, under a blanket of mashed potato and cheese. The sauce was creamy, and contained mussels, salmon, smoked fish of some sort, and veggies. The lemon garnish, which I destroyed pursuit of its juice, was a perfect complement. Good? Folks, they serve this in heaven—I'm morally certain of it.

Tom's mussels were just as good—a stew-pot full of them—tender and sweet, with just enough sauce to enhance them.

Dessert was a white chocolate panna cotta, garnished with chocolate sauce swirled beneath if on the plate and some currants, accompanied by a small scoop of excellent strawberry ice cream skewered by a large shard of very good chocolate. The panna cotta was very suave and creamy, with just barely enough gelatin to retain its shape—PERFECT. We washed it down with another O'Hara's Red, at which point we were both comfortably full....and, for once, smart enough to quit.