May 14th, 2022

Located within the notorious tourist Temple Bar District in Dublin, Quay’s Irish Restaurant was an expensive dive into traditional Irish food.

After climbing a flight of stairs, a waiter sat us at a hightop table in a corner nook – the other tables filled and crammed around the stairs. The decorations were historic, the lighting cozy, and the people lively and loud.

  • Decorations on the wall beside our table.

  • Temple Bar area outside the restaurant.

I ordered the traditional Irish stew with Irish brown bread while my friend Callahan ordered traditional bangers and mash- mash being mashed potatoes. For Callahan, bangers and mash, was a fuzzy memory from her trip to Ireland in 5th grade. The dish consisted of biscuits and gravy, sausage, and mashed potatoes drowned in a savory dark sauce.

The Irish stew was salty with thick potatoes, fresh parsley, and lamb. The brown bread surprised me with its sweet cornbread-like taste, which comes from the use of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to rise it. Together, the meal felt like a southern comfort meal.

When asked about the stew, the waiter’s face brightened as he described the dish with passion. He was from the Dublin area and the stew was a staple of his childhood, thrown together by his mom with whatever they had in the fridge.

Another person at the table ordered a pork pot roast that reminded her of her mom’s pot roast. Another person decided to stray away from the traditional Irish food and ordered a bacon burger, paying 1.5 euros more for the bacon.

Overall, my table of U.S. college students rated this restaurant as pretty good, with a note that the people were nice and very friendly.

Bangers and mash (top) and traditional Irish stew and brown bread (bottom)