Where is the best carvery in Ireland? I’ll find it, even if it kills me

For years I’ve laboured under the assumption that those marrowfat peas that require overnight soakage had gone the way of the dodo. The Saturday night ritual of dumping the whole bag into some water with their little Solpadeine disc of bicarbonate of soda gave way to many Sunday childhood servings of mushy peas along with the roast dinner. Imagine my surprise then when I discovered that while mushy pea technology has evolved to include “no-soak” and tinned varieties, there are still bags complete with bicarb tablets available in supermarkets for those who want to indulge.

I was told recently that mushy peas have “no place” in a carvery dinner. People have emphatic views about carvery dinners, and I had better get used to those views as I’ve recently embarked on a labour of love: a podcast series about Sunday roasts which I’m co-hosting with my friend and fellow beef joint enthusiast Esther O’Moore Donohue. It used to be that handing out business cards was the appropriate way to network and socialise. Then it was email addresses and social media handles. Now it’s “do you have a podcast?” and a polite promise to subscribe no matter the worryingly niche subject matter. My niche subject matter is the pub Sunday roast, and the intended audience is anyone with a deep appreciation of a roast potato, who gets a contact high from the steamy glass of a carvery bain-marie.

As a fat woman I’ve had to come to terms with the cognitive struggle of being public about consuming and enjoying food. My instinct is to make myself smaller and hide away and not remind people that I, like everyone else, need calories to survive. We’re only ever one or two news cycles away from discourse around the “obesity epidemic” or whether or not it’s okay for Taylor Swift to use the word “fat” in a negative context in a music video. “It’s okay for Taylor to say it,” the think pieces go, “because she’s suffered from an eating disorder”. Fat people suffer from eating disorders too while being constantly reminded that their peers in the relentless battle with food are free to acknowledge that being fat is the absolute worst thing imaginable.

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I was fresh out of two months in inpatient eating disorder treatment when Esther and I sowed the seeds of the podcast. We waited patiently through the pandemic for pubs and restaurants to open, and I fought against the constantly tormenting voices in my head that tell me to either eat everything or nothing. The carvery dinners around Dublin we’ve been sampling for the podcast have been helpful in putting some structure on my meals for that day. I’ve been determined not to let any diet culture chat leak into our in-depth investigations on the perfect shape for a boiled carrot — disc or baton — or the ranking of potato styles in order of importance on the plate — Esther is a roast girl for life, while I would argue that mash and roasties share top billing.

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I’ve discovered that stuffing is important to me in a roast dinner, possibly as a result of my mother’s proficiency in both a wet and a dry stuffing. The wet is a stunning meat loaf-esque concoction involving Superquinn sausage meat, while the dry is a breadcrumbs-and-Paxo number involving HP Brown Sauce and just enough melted butter to ensure that it isn’t all that dry after all. Of all the roasts we’ve sampled so far, only one had mushy peas as an option, and two offered Yorkshire puddings. Cabbage seems ubiquitous, while chips as a cheeky side are not unusual. Mass-produced roast potatoes tend to have a lot of give in the outer shell. We’ve yet to come across a truly crispy one. We plan to sample ten roasts in all, with episodes bringing us right up to Christmas Day. Dublin carvery venues like The Yacht in Clontarf and The Morgue in Templeogue are on our list, and we’re hoping to venture out to The Poitín Stil in Rathcoole and The Coachmans by the airport. With any luck, our tens of listeners will balloon enough to allow us to bring our show on the road to sample the roasts of Ireland.

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Everyone I’ve spoken to so far about my carvery journey has lit up in the face at the opportunity to wax lyrical about meat and two veg. There’s obviously a national conversation bubbling underneath the surface as we all strive to load the perfect fork, accompanied by the one true acceptable carvery drink: a pint of Miwadi, or as the Scots call it, “dilutin’ juice”. The UK has a restaurant chain dedicated to roasts with more than 150 Toby Carverys across England, Wales and Scotland. God willing Esther and I will have the chance to take the podcast international, and see if a dedicated carvery joint raises the stakes too high. They’d want to be some fairly crispy roast potatoes.

Emer and Esther’s Sunday Roast with Emer and Esther is available wherever you get your podcasts