Insider View - Goodbye to 2011

This may be the season of goodwill but Lucy Madden’s feet are still very firmly on the ground as she reflects on an ‘interesting’ year and shares some incredibly awful (and hopefully isolated) dining experiences that seem inexplicable in a country where good food and hospitality are seen as fundamental to our national recovery - Christmas will be a welcome break, but there’s certainly plenty of urgent work to get stuck into come January!

Goodbye 2011, we shall not regret your passing. In our family we have seen something previously unimaginable; a daughter on the dole. A local solicitor, advising a neighbour about mortgage repayments, asked: “My first question has to be, are you suicidal? So many of my clients are…” What have we come to?

In a large hotel in Dublin we whispered to the receptionist: “Are you in NAMA?” His face reddened, there was a long pause before he said “No...no.” But the price of the bedrooms and the scarcity of staff told a different story. In the surrounding landscaped areas the weeds were gathering and the roses were unpruned. I thought; here’s an opportunity for an unemployed person (the daughter?) - Why not propose yourself and a hoe? Now that the next generation has taken over the running of our house, the commercial side at least, we are left fidgeting in the wings, looking for work for others to do.

The onset of winter has this old misery guts turning her thoughts, for the first time, to the possibilities of a cruise. Many of our guests from the Antipodes this year were just off, or just off to, a cruise of some description and the enthusiasm was unrestrained. The most often repeated phrase ‘and you can eat all you want’ seems very relevant these days.

Imagine too, the charms of pitching up at, say, the romantic destinations of the Baltic, Copenhagen, Riga, St. Petersburg, without ever having to go near an airport. Oh joy! One of the benefits of reduced income is that the temptation to use airports is lessened. The country that takes a radical approach to making its airports places of charm instead of obstacle courses should reap the benefits in terms of visitor numbers. Meantime sail away seems a more attractive option.

For those of us neither sailing nor flying anywhere in 2011, this was an opportunity to get to know the home country a little better. And, of course, we are like litmus paper when it comes to hearing the impressions of these shores from foreign visitors.

Mostly, their experiences were good, but there is an area which often seemed to cause disappointment and this is in the provision of good food at reasonable prices. I know what these critics mean; this year I had the most outstandingly awful restaurant food I have ever encountered. Kindness prevents me mentioning the name of the restaurant, but it has been in existence for some years and garners a modicum of good reviews.

In a dismal, just off street, setting, we who were the first arrivals of the evening, were the last to be served. We were six diners, and we all ordered different dishes, but every one that (eventually) arrived included a semi-circle of chopped, uncooked Swiss chard. It came with the paté, in Caesar salad, with fish pie and in one of my courses the chard leaves were clinging to a soggy crouton that I suspected was a refugee from the previous Caesar salad.

In the aforementioned fish pie I counted two bite-sized pieces of fish under a brick of mashed potato. Taking aside a man who appeared to be in charge of this sub-standard event, I pointed out that large leaves of uncooked Swiss chard were actually unpalatable, only to be met with a stare of pure hatred.

Some Americans told us of a Chinese restaurant in the Midlands, recommended to them, where the food was so poor that they left it barely touched on the plates. Without comment, a waitress removed the plates and when they went to pay, they remarked politely that they had been disappointed. ‘Never mind,’ said the man at the till, clearly affronted ‘I’ll wrap it up and you can take it home.’ Quite how he thought this resolved the problem, I know not, but our friends declined the offer and handed over their money, which was accepted.

A more unpleasant encounter was regaled to us by a friend involved a restaurant in the south where all the orders in a largish party were mixed up; the food was cold and unappetising. Our friend asked to see the manager, whereupon a large man in a chef’s hat emerged from the kitchen, followed by three tremulous youths. The tone was aggressive, “I am the chef and the manager.” Our friend was told “Who cooked your meal, tell me and I will sack them.” Our friend insisted there was no individual responsible but there followed a loud and angry confrontation with our friend being labelled a “trouble-maker” and “I know your sort.”

When I recounted this incident to our own chef, the son of the house, he of a kinder nature than me pointed out that people these days are working under great strain, and kitchen life has its own added pressures. This reminded me of the words of the late writer Josephine Hart that ‘damaged people are dangerous’. There are a lot of damaged people in this country at the moment.