Irish manners
How Irish citizenship changed me
One thing I know about Irish people is that it’s impolite to complain about the food in a restaurant and they never send anything back to the kitchen.
I learned this years before I moved here when I met up with an Irish friend in a pub somewhere in Massachusetts. I think I was on vacation and she was there for a conference. We ordered our burgers and when hers arrived something was terribly wrong with it. I think it was raw.
My friend said she would “just eat around it,” and I told her to send it back. She refused. Never in her life had she sent something back to the kitchen. She could never. I said that might be true in Ireland, but this is America. The kitchen would want her return it. That convinced her. She apologised to the server for wanting her burger cooked, and of course the server saw what had happened and took it back. I think they just made her another one. My friend had a cross-cultural experience and I have a feeling to this day she sends back inedible dinners—when she is abroad.
I remembered this story the night after the citizenship ceremony as my dinner in a Galway restaurant was placed before me.
In Killarney the night before I had ordered a plate of hot wings in a pub, and those mini-drumsticks with the crispy breading were so delicious, I wanted to eat the same dish again. I was curious about this Galway restaurant’s version.
The order arrived. I expected crispy mini-drumsticks, but this kitchen made the dish with the distal end of the wing.
It looked like a bowl of insects.
But I did not send it back. Because I’m Irish now.