June 6, 2017

The ‘Around the Table’, project explores the history of food in a corner of Dublin City.  Donal Fallon was one of three “artists” to work on the project which explores the history of food in one corner of the city from East Wall to Stoneybatter. “Around the Table” grew out of Dublin’s unsuccessful bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2020. Dublin City Council set aside €600,000 of leftover funding for projects across five areas of the city. You can read the results of the “Around the Table” project in a book of social history that is free online, with interviews, photographs and recipes. “The story of food is a story of labour,” says Fallon. “But it’s also the story of a community.”

There were three project artists involved in the project, who teamed up with different community groups: Fallon, the photographer Jeanette Lowe, and artist Jennie Moran.

The brief was to follow the journey of food from the Docklands, to the market, to the table – to gather stories, recipes, and oral histories. Over nine months, the trio met with community groups, and fine-tuned the project with interviews and events.

The Docklands

The Docklands is synonymous with Dublin’s food heritage, said Declan Byrne, who worked as a docker from 1972 to 2000.

“If you think of the shops and the markets in Dublin every single item of food in those days was imported, particularly after the Second World War,” said Byrne, who was involved as part of the Dublin Docklands Preservation Society.

“Everything in the markets came from the port,” he says. “There’s the odd story of how 100 percent of it never made it [in other words, was stolen] because of the poverty in the Docklands itself.”

The history of Dublin’s grub is not without its controversies.

One event documented in Around the Table illustrated Dublin’s ongoing debate over how to make coddle, says Byrne.

“All the groups met one night for a coddle night,” he says. “But the people in Ringsend are very strict in what a coddle must contain”, as Byrne found out.

There is a Ringsend coddle, and a Northside coddle. The Ringsend coddle has less colour to it, while the Northside takes on a brown or red hue depending on what is added to the recipe. “Oxo cubes?” the book suggests.

Along with Dublin coddle, Cowtown café’s fish and chips feature. Other parts of the book explore the history of gur cake and cabbage water.

The book includes Dublin recipes, and interviews with Dubliners who grew up among the market stalls of Moore Street, the cattle market on North Circular Road, and the Smithfield fruit and veg market.

“These are sites that people remember,” he says. You can view this wonderful book online here.