Bernard O'Shea: The Irish carvery is my one true culinary love

The queue, the carbs, the desperate hunt for a seat. There's nothing Bernard doesn't love about a carvery dinner.

Bernard O'Shea. Photograph Moya Nolan

There seems to be a Ross and Rachel “we were on a break” confusion between the hospitality sector and the Government at the moment and what I long for is the day when I can rekindle my relationship with my one true culinary love: the Irish carvery.

If I was given the task by the Oxford English Dictionary to describe a typical Irish carvery, I would probably define it as: “A meal enjoyed mostly in a pub setting by Irish people who wanted a ‘dinner’ but just couldn’t face into boiling spuds, young families seeking refuge with Granny and Grandad, and upright citizens bet down with a vicious hangover from the night before.” 

As all carvery aficionados know, the queue is where the real action is at. Firstly, there are the risk takers. They are the individuals who don’t get a tray. As they look sideways at the drooling masses these dare-devils realise that they will either have to go to the back of the queue and get one and lose their place or risk carrying several hot plates loaded with carbohydrates through a crowded room. As a side note I always seem to pick a wet tray that’s just been freshly wiped with a stinky j-cloth.

Then there are the Oscar nominated actors who try and squeeze themselves un-noticed at the top of the pile and have to be told politely “sorry there’s a queue here”. You know who you are.

My personal favourites are the 'The Holders'. Their role isn’t to order food but to hold a spot for a relative or friend who’s running late. They try every trick the book including the “You go ahead. I don’t know what I want yet” line but I know… oh I know.

The action ramps up when it gets to your turn to assemble your plate of starchy goodness but some salivating sapiens didn’t get the memo and ask for a menu. So often I’ve wanted to roar “THE FOOD IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU”.

Then there’s always a person who’s wearing a backpack who asks for the “option”. The “option”, that always seems to have feta cheese in it, takes forever to appear leaving everybody in the queue to wait behind a damp North Face embankment while breathing impatiently at “Mr. Awkward”.

But one of the most insightful perennial sights is how tourists, especially those from the warmer climes, look at an Irish Carvery like it’s an some kind of weird stainless steel smörgåsbord that serves potatoes with other types of potatoes. 

I have witnessed a group of young Italians nearly wet themselves laughing as they watched in amazement as customers ordered and swallowed down lasagne and chips.

If you want your thirst quenched the Irish Carvery doesn’t disappoint either. The pints of water stacked at the end of the counter have that special mix of lemon and bleach combined with melting ice and thick condensation – refreshing.

But one thing has remained constant. If you want Mi-Wadi or as our British neighbours call it “squash”, it has always been 15c. In my memory, even before the euro change over it was 15 pence a dash and now it’s still 15 cents. I’m beginning to think its price is probably written into the constitution. Article 53: The 'dash' or 'Mi-Wadi splash' in a public bar must remain at 15 cents until the end of time.

When you get to the end the deserts that are displayed in glass boxes that wouldn’t look out of place in Tiffanys. They are there to remind you that even after your entire daily intake of calories a massive bright red cheesecake is waiting for you on the smallest plate they could find.

Tray loaded, there comes the horror of having to possibly sit with strangers. Pubs are laid out for alcohol not food. Families send out their fittest to ask random strangers “is there anyone on that seat?”. You begin to look at a tiny three-legged worn-out stool with faded green upholstery as if it's the most prized possession in your life.

All around there are kids with full plates of cold food in front of them just screaming because they have fuel injected four bottles of Club Orange into their blood streams while their father just stares at St. Mirren v Falkirk on Sky Sports 53. Every now he just turns his head and says, “get down from there Tadhg you’ll break that light”. That’s me by the way.

So why do I miss it so much? A carvery is most definitely my culinary safety blanket but it’s not so much the food I miss. It's the joy of sitting in a pub looking at all the tiny details of Irish life unfold in front of you.

Watching Granny and Grandad trying to run after a two-year-old who’s using a wet floor sign as a weapon. Or a disgruntled Mammy waiting impatiently on gravy that’s never going to appear. Or the family whose dinner goes cold because their small kids decided to go to the toilet thirteen times in half an hour.

I miss being in a packed room with people, beautiful, annoying, intriguing, hungry people. So, when the carvery is back I’ll be first in the queue with my slippery brown tray, knowing that we are the only nation in the world that give you the option to order chicken vol-au-vents as a main course, completely safe in the knowledge that you don’t miss the view until its gone. That view for me is the one beside the telly.