Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Howth Cuisine

Our guests from Oslo arrived Friday evening intact and in good spirits. Another successful Ryanair adventure. Saturday morning Bill fed us eggs, rashers, mushrooms, white pudding, sausage, toast and broiled tomatoes, i.e., an Irish breakfast. Thusly fueled, we spent the sunny afternoon wandering St. Anne's park.

Saturday night we went to dinner at Aqua in Howth. We arrived in time to enjoy the sunset over Dublin Bay and also to order from the Early Bird menu. Early Bird options occur frequently on Dublin menus, typically a three-course Prix Fixe, and are attractive to diners far from retirement. Aqua's Early Bird offered three courses and a bottle of wine for €65 per couple. The four adults took advantage of this option, while the resident 8-year old chose buttered pasta with parmesan, and an improvised Shirley Temple.

Kent had the best appetizer, a salad with chicken and a quail egg. Tracy and I had fried calamari, mostly tender, but could have been crispier fried, in my opinion. Bill's seafood chowder was tasty. Bill and Tracy had salmon with Savoy cabbage for entrée. Kent had a steak on bean cassoulet and salsa verde and I had haute fish and chips.

Desserts were beautiful and tasted good too. Bill's orange mousse roulade was probably the best, Kent's cheesecake the weirdest, and Tracy and my lemon tarts the tartiest. Kayleigh's trio of homemade ice cream was delightful, but chocolate sauce accents can be tricky when they look like part of the plate design!

After dinner we looked at some charcoal drawing in the lounge. The artist was one of our fellow guests last weekend in Wexford. The lounge was lovely and we considered lingering in front of the fire, but we decided instead to head out into the cold night to catch the DART.

6 comments:

mom Gunter said...

Yum! Everything looks good!!!!!!The orange mousse looks delicious. That is the prettiest little girl Sharon. I wasn't sure about the quail eggs. They looked a little runny. I'm not a fan of under cooked eggs. Everything else looked great!!

mom Gunter said...

You probably get more comments from your parents because we love you two the mostest and the bestest!!!!!!! It would really be sad if you didn't get any comments from us!!!!! I really would think that Tob would write more often. I really miss hearing from "OUR FAVORITE BEAGLE". I love to hear from her pal Trevor too! Come on Tob and Trevor!!!!!!!!!!! write and send photos!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!

Scott & Renee said...

Hi guys,
Just printed off a salad recipe with migas (never heard about them before)--your blog has sent me to epicurious quite a few times. Thanks! I'll let you know how the salad comes out. We have enjoyed reading about your adventure outside of the food realm as well. Today,
I shared your blog with a neighbor who is married to an irish gent. She suggests:"Tell them they need to get up to Northern Ireland up to Port Rush to see the Giant's Causeway & Dunluce Castle. Co Antrim I believe. They will not regret it. The road from Dublin to the North is pretty bad, under construction, but once in the North the roads are much better. Well, as good as they can get. All roads are narrow and bumpy there."

Love to You,
Renee & Scott

BillG said...

Hey Renee! Good to hear from you. Is the recipe Green salad with goat cheese, artichoke hearts and migas? It sounds good, but the migas in the recipe aren't Tex Mex migas. The Tex Mex version served all over Austin is eggs scrambled with corn tortilla chips, onion, chiles, tomatoes and cheese, topped with salsa.

The North is definitely on our list of places to go. Wednesday we travel to Barcelona for a few days.

Sharon said...

Hi Renee! We definitely want to visit the North, as they say. We have no excuse to miss any part of Ireland as it is only about 4 hours max to anywhere.

Scott & Renee said...

Yes, that's the only recipe with migas at epicurious. Why don't you send me a tex mex miga recipe at spresc4685@aol.com?

congrat's sharon on the job!