Fifth annual Celtic festival takes place on St. Patrick’s Day weekend in close proximity to pints of Guinness and everything Irish
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Kali Thurber pours an Irish whisky to go with wheaten bread and a dish of calconnon (a potato dish) at The Shebeen Whiskey Bar at the Irish Heather in Gastown. Photograph by : Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun
Owners Steve and Lil McVittie in their Celtic Treasure Chest store on Dunbar Street. Photograph by : Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun
It’s not exactly historically, ancestrally, culturally, politically, or even culinarily correct, but when we think Celtic celebration, we think Irish pubs, a free flow of Guinness thickened with Irish stew.
What’s wrong with that, you say? Nothing, really, except that it’s not quite the whole shebang. (That last phrase, by the way, has an Irish origin, from the word shebeen, or dwelling.)
Celtic nations that have retained their Celtic languages and culture are Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany, as well as Ireland. But historically, Celtic ancestry stretches to northern Portugal and Spain.
So while potato dishes, Irish stew and Guinness are certainly part of Celtic foods, so are haggis, Scotch eggs and kippers, deep-fried Mars Bar (a subtle Scottish creation), cider, galettes, prune clafoutis, Welsh cakes, Welsh rarebit and salt cod.
Meanwhile, the fifth annual Edgewater Casino CelticFest (March 12 to 16) takes place on St. Patrick’s Day weekend in the downtown area in close proximity to Guinness and plentiful Irish food at Ceilli’s Irish Pub, Morrissey’s Irish House, Doolin’s Irish Pub and Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug.
Sean Heather, who owns Gastown’s Irish Heather and Shebeen Whiskey Bar (that’s whiskey with an “e,” unlike Scottish whisky) opines that the Irish Celts dominate because they are the largest Celtic group and a people who fought to foster their heritage, he feels.
“We [the Irish] worked our way free of British imperialism and fought to resurrect the culture and language. There are still towns in Ireland where Gaelic is the first language.”
Steve McVittie, who operates The Celtic Treasure Chest Bakery And Deli in Vancouver and White Rock, points out that Celts all have their own special days of celebration. “Whether it’s Robbie Burns Day, St. Patrick’s Day or St. David’s Day, each country has a patron saint and each celebrates their day with food and festivities,” he says.
He sells British Celtic foods including various meat pies (Melton Mowbray, Cornish, Scottish bridies, pork pies, pasty’s), bacons, haggis, sausages (Loren, Cumberland, Dubliner, pork and apple, lamb and mint), jams, preserves, candies, shortbreads, cookies, candies and marmalades. His breads span the Celtic nations — hovis, Irish potato, soda, spelt, kamut, Aberdeen rowies, butteries, parkins and Scottish oatcakes.
And many of the items on his shelves have historical and cultural attachments. The canned baked beans, for example, were illegal to import into Canada until after the Second World War. “It was because of the ratio of beans to tomato sauce. The British like beans on toast and for the sauce to absorb into the toast, so there’s more liquid.”
Teas are totally different from North American teas.
“British teas are fuller-bodied. Irish Breakfast is very, very rich and strong. British tea drinkers can tell the difference and come out and buy 10 boxes at a time.”
The British Butcher Shoppe in North Vancouver and John Bull British Bakery and Deli in Coquitlam are other shopping meccas for local Celts. There are some 30 different sausages covering Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditions at British Butcher. The shop sells “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of haggis, culminating in 2,400 pounds sold around Robbie Burns Day. “I might celebrate [on Robbie Burns Day] but I won’t eat it,” says owner Gerry Davenport.
The Welsh, meanwhile, celebrated their Celtic roots on March 1, St. David’s Day. Leeks play a prominent role in Welsh food, as do Welsh griddle cakes.
“When we were children going to school, we’d wear a leek pinned to our sweaters and nibble at it during the day,” says Jane Byrne, president of the Vancouver Welsh Society. “I remember it very well. Leek is truly the national emblem.”
Lamb is also an important food but it would be roasted, not stewed like in Ireland. “Then we make a soup [cawl] out of the bones and leftovers and leeks. It’s similar to a stew,” she says. Other prominent Welsh foods are cockles; bara brith (speckled bread with raisins or currants); bara lawr (a seaweed) eaten with bacon for breakfast; and cheeses, particularly Caerphilly, which is like a white cheddar.
“The cocklewomen of Gower were very famous,” Byrne says. “It’s west of Swansea and they picked on the beaches.” And Welsh rarebit is an actual Welsh dish, although they don’t call it that. It’s cheese, flour and beer on toast, basically. River salmon (sewyn) and river trout are very, very important, she says.
And sweets are like chewable nostalgia to many British Celts. The Curly Worly’s (a chocolate caramel), Dolly Mix, pontefract cakes (black licorice medallions), mint humbugs and fruit pastels are the best sellers, Davenport says. Sugar and Co. in West Vancouver and Clayburn Village Store and Tea Shop in Abbotsford are well-known for appeasing British hunger for sweet-laced memories.
At Milséan Shoppe, in Aldergrove, owners Rob and Maureen Robinson make a version of an Irish buttercrunch chocolate from an old family recipe. Milséan means “sweet things” in Gaelic, Rob says, and the company logo is an Irish Claddagh ring with two hands clasping a heart. The secret to their success, he says, is demerara sugar and Fraser Valley butter, which is creamy and comparable to Irish butter.
But as Heather describes traditional British Celtic cuisine, it’s food of an impoverished, oppressed people. “It’s stews and poorer cuts of meat, slowly stewed or braised.” And of course, even after the potato blight and subsequent famine and political struggles over food, potatoes are an Irish staple.
“It has a very close place, genetically and in our hearts. They love and hate the potato,” he says. “The Irish are criticized for having relied on that one crop but the truth is, potatoes could yield way more from a tiny plot of land than any other vegetable. When combined with dairy and greens, it grew big, strong, healthy people. It’s a proven fact. Through the generations, land plots had been divided up and had became smaller and smaller, and also people came in and took the land off the native Irish, who then became serfs. It’s all they ate because they couldn’t afford anything else.”
At his restaurant, Irish Heather, Heather offers Irish food of the 1960s and 1970s. “Pot pie is not Irish but we do beef and Guinness pot pie; fish and chips are English but it’s always been in Ireland. Colcannon [mashed potatoes mixed with kale or cabbage and butter] is definitely traditionally Irish.”
And on the topic of Irish whiskey (his whiskey house, Shebeen, sells 22 varieties), he says before Prohibition and Irish independence, they were the whiskies of choice in the world. “There were 3,400 distilleries in Ireland,” he says. “After independence, part of the punishment was Ireland couldn’t trade with Commonwealth countries. It lost the world market and only had a domestic market and by the time Prohibition was over, it killed the industry.”
Naturally, he prefers Irish whiskey. “It’s triple-distilled, which takes the roughness and impurities out,” he says. But fans of Scottish whisky say scotch has more complex flavours.
While he might feel competitive about whiskey, Heather is a kindred spirit with other Celts. “Absolutely,” he says. “We’re Celtic cousins. There’s always been a kinship. We were always fighting for our lives. And they’re always invited to Celtic festivals in Ireland.”
CELTIC FOOD SOURCES
Should you wish to imbibe or ingest a wee bit of Celtic flavour, these are some places where you’ll find foods of the British Celts.
British Butcher Shoppe
703 Queensbury Ave., North Vancouver, 604-985-2444
British Home Store
3986 Moncton St., Richmond, 604-274-2261
Celtic Treasure Chest
5639 Dunbar St., Vancouver, 604-261-3688
1534 Foster St., White Rock, 604-538-2277
Clayburn Village Store and Tea Shop
34810 Clayburn Rd., Abbotsford, 604-853-4020
Dentry’s Irish Pub
4450 West 10th Ave., 604-224-3434
Doolin’s Irish Pub
654 Nelson Street, 604-605-4343
The Irish Heather
217 Carrall St., 604-688-9779
(Moving to 210 Carrall St. in June.)
John Bull British Bakery and Deli
1046 D Austin Ave., Coquitlam, 604-939-4797
Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug
1033 Granville St., 604-685-4946
Milséan Shoppe
2900 272nd St., Aldergrove, 604-856-3024
Morrissey’s Irish House
1227 Granville St., 604-682-0909
Shebeen Whiskey Bar
9 Gaoler’s Mews, 604-915-7338
(Moving to 210 Carrall St. in June.)
Sugar and Company
1348 Marine Dr., West Vancouver, 604-925-0801
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
