The play was All My Sons. I had recently re-read Death of a Salesman, which reminded me of the sheer brilliance of Miller's writing. Seeing this play cemented that opinion, although it was odd to be watching Irish actors doing American accents with more or less agility as they struggled to interpret the very American theme of the play. The father, a brilliant actor, had the purest accent, a fact explained, as I discovered afterward, by the fact that he was Canadian.
Tonight I took the short walk home through the Edenderry streets after a dinner with new friends. Niamh and Nall, the spelling of whose names I could very well be butchering, own my favorite spot in Edenderry, the Eden Deli. They moved here five years ago from Dublin, although Nall has worked as far away as Cedar Rapids when he was in the IT industry. He is a self-taught cook and, like Niamh, passionately devoted to food. I discovered the deli on my first visit to the town; in fact, its presence helped me to make the decision to live here. The deli was hands down the best food I had had in Ireland at that point, even though its relatively modest lunchtime offerings of sandwiches, salads and a couple of hot entrees would not on the surface seem like the kind of food that would sell you on a place to live. The atmosphere was simple but scrupulously clean and charming. It's a place you can bring a book to in the late afternoon and read quietly with a cup of tea and a scone, something I have done two or three times when I needed to get away from the computer or felt I had earned a treat.
I have had breakfast with Claire at the deli, and lunch with my brother when he visited and with a young scholar I have been working with here. I had a meeting in the balcony dining room with a group of artists from the area who wanted to know about artists' books, a medium unfamiliar to them. I buy freshly made loaves of granary bread, often to give away but also to eat; the toast from this bread, which is made using a three-day fermenting process, is gorgeous. Tonight I discovered the reason for the excellence of the offerings: Niamh and Nall are completely devoted to locally sourced, seasonal, and when possible organic produce and meat. They make their own stocks, breads, rolls, and pastries. Recently Nall decided he was unhappy with the bacon he was buying so he simply began to dry-cure his own; tomorrow he will do the first test serving of the rashers in the cafe. They have located sources for many products I have been frustrated in finding, including canned chickpeas. They have a supplier for prosciutto and serrano hams. They know all of the artisanal cheese producers, and have checked out the ten or so micro-breweries that are at the forefront of local Irish beer. Niamh is trying to track down some bees so they can have a hive in their back garden, a large, sunny space behind their live-work premises.
Their sophisticated house behind the cafe began as two stone walls that had long since lost their roof. They have turned this space into a marvelous big room with a heavy dining table at one end, a sitting room in the middle, and a dream kitchen on the other. The word COOK is laid out in large white letters on the vent fan above the stove. They have books everywhere. Nall has a carefully selected group of cookbooks and a collection of food literature. His bible is the collected Elizabeth David, arguably the most important food writer in Britain in the 20th century. Niamh is passionate about books; I left with two books under my arm along with a promise that she would list out for me the titles of a large stack of books she had set aside from her library that I must read. We are trading two Colm Tóibín books: I am giving her his latest, Brooklyn, and I in turn am getting The Master, his most popular novel.
In the cafe, Niamh and Nall are quiet about the depth of the care they take with the food. They don't mention the organic nature of most of the ingredients, nor the fact that the lettuce in their salads was grown in their garden, just a few yards from the cafe's kitchen. The seasonal nature of the food is implicit in their menu; they don't make a huge point about what they are doing. This is probably smart marketing; they are a neighborhood cafe serving good food to their customers rather than a restaurant out to make a point. Meeting them has given me a slightly different lens through which to view the people and the culture here, and a hefty reminder that even though this is a very small island there is still a surprise around every corner.
