Irish Cooking: A Culinary Quest

One grilled chicken salad, one grilled ham with butter and stinging mustard, washed down by pints, served up by a merry staff, is nicer. As nice as the stranger explaining the offside rule and the blindness of the referee, poor man.

That evening it rains hammers and nails, blowing half a gale through the black streets. We duck into Monroe's Pub, go behind the bar, dodge the bartenders, through a narrow door to the Pizza Cabin. Place our order, tell the server where we'll be in the pub. God's own hot, crisp, cheesy pizza arrives 10 minutes later.

Next day, a ramble away from Galway finds us in Westport, the elegant provincial capital in County Mayo. At noon the churches are full, the pubs closed. As an excuse to get out of the rain we stop in O'Cee's Coffee Shop. The coffee passes muster, but a fat scone -- suitably crusted, with a soft cake interior, here-and-there currants and a bit of butter -- makes the moment deliciously complete.

Another foodie proverb: The best Indian food beyond the subcontinent is in London. Now add, astonishingly, Westport. We find it at the Everest, run by Jivan Timalisina, born in Nepal. The recently opened restaurant is in an old stone chapel on the tree-lined quay of the Carrowbeg River. The green, maroon and white decor shines, overlooked by a spectacular image of the Anapurna range. Lunch is a vivid chicken tikka and sizzling lamb kebabs laid across grease-free onions and peppers, with a riata of yogurt, mint and parsley. Curries have a blush of tomato. Nutty basmati rice balances the heat. (Choices are mild, medium or hot, but go for hot -- do you really want to live forever?) Cobra beer, golden, as bitter as it is cold, is recommended.

Business is good, Timalisina says, and not just for wandering gourmands. "We're getting a very good local following," he says.

It Only Gets Better

To say Connemara -- that land of mountains springing from flat moors, ebony lakes changing to blue along with the vault of sky -- is beautiful is to say nothing. So say what Mary says, as we approach every turn of the road: "Prepare to gasp."

In the town of Clifden, set above an estuary leading to the sea, a place where hikers and cyclists make base camp, lunch is at E.J. Kings, a pub of stone-flagged floors and food either simple or full of flair. The Guinness is creamy, and an open-faced crab sandwich on brown bread, with no mayonnaise but just oil, gives a straightforward tang of the sea. Just as good is a BLT, with crispy rashers (bacon), sun-dried tomatoes, caramelized onions and a sharp farmhouse cheese making every bite satisfyingly complex.

But the star is the chowder, based in rich stock, laced with sherry, cream, onions, potatoes and salmon that adds a touch of pink to the creamy whiteness.

After a day spent walking the empty, mountain-shadowed moors, enchanted by the innocence of nimble Connemara lambs -- woolly, black-faced, with slender black legs -- we decide to eat one.

The pleasantly eccentric Marconi Restaurant offers the old peasant food with remarkable changes. Colcannon -- baked cabbage, mashed potatoes and butter -- is updated brilliantly, just with lemon. The rack of lamb is crusted outside, lusciously pink inside. And there are three kinds of potatoes: mint-roasted, mashed with oven-baked scallops wrapped in streaky bacon, and a quickly disappearing mound of sea-salted fries.

Sweets for the sweets: three scoops of hand-churned ice cream in a caramel- and brandy-spun basket afloat in a pool of English toffee sauce.

The next morning at the Quay House, in the sparkling conservatory of vines climbing and crisscrossing overhead, the breakfast is superb, especially a counter of freshly squeezed orange juice, grapefruit wheels, apricots, rhubarb and syrupy plums next to a bowl of thick yogurt, the best tasted outside Greece. But the black pudding? It's . . . never mind.