"Irish Cooking at its Best"

"Gallagher's Boxy House is vibrant with life. Up until now the city river's left bank has offered food from France, Portugal, Italy and China. Gallagher's Boxty House has given an ethnic Irish restaurant popping the myth that here's no such thing as Irish Cuisine.

Better still, this isn't fossilized "Traditional Irish Cooking" of the Oh! Its pancake time again, let me see if we can dig up the same old hardy annual. Just like the music playing in the restaurant. Hot House Flowers, Mary Black, Van Morrison, Horslips, this is Irish foods as a living culture, improving and enhancing recipes with ingredient that were not available in the Emergency Years when many of these dishes were at their most popular.

But if the food isn't fossilized, it certainly isn't modernized with gimmicks like "novelle cuisine" either.

The size of the room in Gallagher's necessitated our sitting at the corner of a table for eight and immediately Martin fell into conversation with the solo diner opposite, inviting comments about her native county of Leitirm, how the Irish are perceived abroad in her experience and, how to cook boxty.

More conversation followed with the waitress and Martin was visually ticking the bits of conversation.” One of the greatest attractions of this country is conversation. You saw how the lady opposite joined in so quickly and how to articulate the waitress is”, he said later. “It annoys me when staff in restaurants act in a stand-offish way. How do they become like that? Is it part of their training? It's not natural.
 
We began with smoked wild salmon for me, served with brown bread, butter and a creamy mayonnaise dressing permeated with dill and a suggestion of pickled dill cucumber. The salmon was a dreamy, seeping with natural oiliness, wonderfully fishy.

Martin described his broth as "undeniably vegetabley”, and it too was served with generous wedges of bread.

We both ordered boxty for the main course. The boxtys in Gallagher's are much larger than the four by four inch slabs tradition intended. They are a pancake mixture made from raw and cooked potato folded over different fillings.

Martin chose ham and cabbage- a good pink slipper with bright Savoy cabbage, while I opted for the special of the day, chicken with Seville oranges.

In traditional Irish fashion the remaining surface of the plate was covered with vegetables: cauliflower in a milk sauce, and carrots.

We finished the meal with home-made brown bread and Bailey's ice cream for me and bread and butter (pudding) for Martin. Both were state of the art.

…Verdict? "If I don't come back for the Boxty I'll come back for the bread and butter pudding - God its lovely.

"Old Pine And Boxty"

"You might not think that traditional Irish food would have as much pulling power as traditional Irish drink- and in broad global terms you would probably be right. The balance may be shifting, nevertheless.

So popular have the potato pancakes, bacon and cabbage and bread and butter pudding proved at Gallagher's Boxty House, Dublin's first truly traditional restaurant that it doubled in size after just one year in business. Fortunately the cosy country kitchen atmosphere remains unchanged.

It was while Pádraic Óg Ó'Gallchobháir from Leitrim was cooking abroad on yachts sailing between Venezuela and Antigua that he dreamt up the plan for a restaurant of his own- inspired by homesickness for the Boxty pancakes his mother cooked on Friday nights in Mohill.

Less than two years later, he and his brother Ronan were installed in Temple Bar, watching rock stars like Ron Wood, the stick insect-like guitarist with the Rolling Stones, come through the door.

The place is usually busy and no reservations are taken in advance, but a civilised system operates whereby you while away the wait for a free table in The Auld Dubliner across the road."