2011 Birthday Celebration

There aren’t very many businesses still doing today what they set out to do 400 years ago, and at Grace Neill’s we are genuinely thrilled at the opportunity to carry the torch for years to come.

2011 marks our 400th birthday and we aren’t going to let this cause for celebration slip by unnoticed. We are hoping to host a series of events throughout the whole year; the main one we are focussing on at the minute is our official birthday celebration coming this spring.

We are planning a big party where we’ll be serving a range of unusual but tasty foods that would be in keeping with the food served at the time the pub originally opened. It’ll be a great themed night with good food, good drinks and good entertainment for everyone. We can’t wait, and we hope you can’t either!

History of the Potato

The potato has been around for a long time, and is one of the earliest ever cultivated foods, but only arrived in Europe in 1570, from South America. The Irish took to it quickly. It grew well in Irish conditions, provided bountiful harvests and, most importantly, could be easily stored and eaten during the winter months.

Its effect was nothing short of dramatic, but what seemed initially like the answer to a prayer would turn out to be a curse.The Irish population, with access to this new staple food, began to grow, and extremely rapidly. When the potato arrived in 1580 there were fewer than 1 million people living in Ireland, by 1840 the population had exploded to more than 8 million, most of them poor.

The burgeoning population lived on a diet comprised mainly of potatoes and milk, which if eaten in sufficient quantity is a surprisingly nutritious, if monotonous, diet.Milk was not always available and herring was a popular and cheap substitute, with oatmeal replacing or supplementing potatoes when they were scarce. They also ate what they could forage in the wild – berries, nuts, nettles, wild mushrooms and now and then a rabbit or bird. However these were all occasional rather than regularly eaten foodstuffs.

While the potato provided enough food to allow the poor to survive and grow in number, it also caused their diet to become very narrow and restricted, a massive change from the varied diet eaten in earlier times and, as would become clear, a very dangerous dependence.d easy to prepare.The better off had access to cultivated vegetables and regularly ate meat, primarily pork and mutton with rather less beef. However these foods were expensive and even in the homes of the well off tended to be ‘padded out’ with potato.

Many dishes looked on as being typically Irish – champ (potatoes and scallions, or spring onions), colcannon (potatoes and cabbage), Irish Stew (the poorer cuts of meat with potato and vegetables), boxty (fried potato cakes) – were developed at this time in an effort to eke out the food available and also, presumably, to provide some variety.
Another traditional Irish food, black pudding, which is made from ox blood and oatmeal, gave those who had a cow access to protein without killing their valuable animal – the blood came from occasional bleeding of live animals.

Irish stew is a filling, flavorful peasant dish made with the least-expensive, most readily-available ingredients. The Irish raised primarily sheep and root crops for subsistence. The sheep provided wool for warm clothing, milk for drinking and making cheese, and eventually food. Potatoes were the main food crop, prior to the potato famine.
Irish stew is traditionally made of lamb or mutton, potatoes, onions, and parsley. Often, lamb or mutton neck bones, shanks, and other trimmings were the basis for the stock. The root vegetables added further flavor and thickening power, as well as filling sustenance. Some cooks added turnips or parsnips, carrots, and barley when available.

View the 1611 Tasting menu

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