My Irish Eyes Weren't Smiling
I am an Irish Girl. I have auburn hair, freckles, green eyes, I glow under black light, and I can hold my Jameson and Guinness. OK, I know there a lots of people from other countries who read this, so just to be clear...I have never actually been to Ireland (waiting for the Euro to drop a bit). My family left Ireland a long long time ago (like while America was still under British rule), but hey I am proud of my heritage. Anyways, I love traditional Irish food. Last trip David and I went to Raglan Road and it was a good meal. I had spent 11 months dreaming of their bread pudding, so we decided to try it again. I had really been looking forward to this meal.
As always, they brought us soda bread with a guinness dipping sauce. Everyone, particularly Tweedle Dee liked it. We also ordered the Dalkey Duo. And everyone got a soda to drink (David had a diet coke, the rest of us had regular cokes). The soda is where the problems started. No one there could seem to understand that I was drinking a regular coke while my husband was drinking a diet coke. Every time a soda was brought to us, we had to correct them. But even that wasn't enough. Eventually it just became funny that David and I were trying to finish our sodas at the same time so that we could exchange with each other the sodas they brought us as refills. I don't have photos of the Dalkey Duo...but you aren't missing anything. We didn't even finish them. They were not good.
Tweedle Dum and I both had Kevin's Heavenly Ham. Tweedle Dum loves ham, actually he loves anything pork related (bacon, ham, pork chops, etc.) I found the ham to be anything but heavenly. I thought it was incredibly dry and didn't finish my dish. Though, the cabbage wasn't bad.
David had the serious sirloin. And David is serious about his sirloin. He ordered his cooked medium and it came out dry and overcooked. He could have sent it back, but he just wasn't in the mood. So he ate some of it and decided to save room for dessert. Saving room for dessert....that's just one of the many reasons why I married him!
Tweedle Dee got a penne pasta dish. I don't see its name on any of the available menus, but I don't think it was a special. Anyways, it was penne pasta with some type of red wine sauce. He hated it. And he hated me for bringing him here. Poor Tweedle.
Dessert was the best part of the meal. The bread pudding is still good. But it is huge and really rich. So unless you have a hollow leg, eating all of dinner plus the bread and butter pudding is difficult. I ate 1/3. Which was sad because it really was delicious. David ate 1/2 of his. Tweedle Dee, in an attempt to humor me, had 3 bites. Then he poured all the sauces in it and began to stir it into a gross mess. At this point in time, I started to wonder if Fairy Godmother's would babysit teenagers. I also wondered why they didn't sell smaller versions of the bread pudding. I always feel so guilty when I through away food.
Tweedle Dum, well he was just a joy this evening. He was thrilled with his dinner. And for dessert, he decided to be an iconoclast and get out of Tweedle Dee's shadow. I think he got the Dunbrody's Kiss, which is chocolate served 3 ways. It was a chocolate mousse, a white chocolate something, and a chocolate milkshake. Now, he didn't eat all of it...but hey Rome wasn't built in a day. At least he liked the milkshake (which he drank before I could even take the picture). MMMM...ordering chocolate 3 ways...well it is obvious he takes after me. I would have ordered that, if I didn't know how yummy bread pudding is! And, bless his little Tweedle heart, he actually started to get into WDW (notice the pins and the lanyard!??!)
I don't know Raglan Road was having an off day, if the food had really gone that much down hill since August 2007, or if the last time around I just consumed too much Guinness to be an objective eater. Whatever the case, this time I was disappointed. And the Tweedles? Well, other than the bread, Tweedle Dee was downright miserable and we ended up taking him somewhere else later. Tweedle Dum...well he was the surprise of the evening because this meal was one of his favorites. I guess it goes to show that everything is subjective. As for me, I won't be making ADR's here for awhile. I got the recipe for the bread pudding, so hopefully that will satisfy my cravings.