On the Road with Reid 'Round Ireland: Of Pub Grub and Toasteds and Cakes Made of Guinness (cont'd)

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Irish stew and fish 'n' chips are stalwarts of many a pub menu, including that at E.J. King's, a music pub since 1832 in the colorful Connemara village of Clifden

• Salmon from the Shannon and Ireland's other rivers can be melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and the Irish often smoke it to slice and serve in sandwiches.
• Colcannon is an old Friday (meatless) dish of smashed potatoes, cabbage, and onion fried up in milk and butter
• Corned beef is often served with horseradish sauce and a pile of over-boiled cabbage.
• Shepherd's pie may not be totally Irish, but "British Isles" is close enough, and there's little more filling than this casserole of ground beef, carrots, and peas topped with creamy mashed potatoes, then baked.
• Cheeses are the unsung culinary delights of Ireland, on a par with those of Italy, France, and England; if you ever see them advertised as a dessert option on a menu (rarely), pounce on them. Otherwise, sample a bunch as part of a makeshift picnic.
• Guinness cake is sometimes politely called porter cake since you could make it with any stout, and is basically a dense fruitcake moistened by throwing a liberal amount of beer into the mix.

That's the rib-sticking diet one comes to Ireland to enjoy—along with heaps of chunky brown bread and slabs of the amazingly desiccating soda bread—the sort of food best washed down with a pint (see below). Luckily, those dishes are what's on tap at the kitchens of a thousand pubs across the Emerald Isle, and usually for around €5 to €8 ($6 to $9.50) per heaping serving—though that pint will add another €3 to €3.60 ($3.50 to $4.25).

Fair warning, though. Not all pubs serve food, and those that do often limit food service to noon to 2:30pm, so you're likelier to find a pub grub lunch than a dinner. But there will usually be at least one pub in town that dishes out dinners or operates a carvery—sort of like a mini cafeteria, only with succulent roasts to be hand-carved and piled with sides for your enjoyment back in the bar (that's a carvery meal I'm enjoying in the photo at the start of this article).

Even if they don't do a fuller menu, most pubs will at least have a few sandwiches on offer, especially the ubiquitous toasteds, a €2.30 ($2.70) ham and cheese sandwich on white bread which is invariably toasted whilst still wrapped in a plastic sleeve. Why they do this, I've no idea, but to be fair only once did I ever have to pick charred bits of plastic out of the grill marks on the bottom of my toasted.

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