Exciting times: I have successfully remembered that #TheSession is happening! We’ve made it to #149: Pub Food (Pub Food!)* David Jesudason is our genial host this time, and his entry on pizza is an inspired start. I do love a good pub pizza: here in Dublin, we have some excellent options: MeMa’s and The Morris Bar both have fantastic pizza (hot honey? Yes, please), and Rascals is well worth the bus ride for both the beer and pizza.
But good beer and pizza – my favourite night-before-a-race meal – is not the main focus for this instalment of #TheSession. Rather, I’m taking the opportunity to bang the drum for my longstanding idée fixe: all pubs, everywhere, should have soft pretzels.
Hear me out: they can be parbaked and frozen, and warmed up in a relatively smallish toaster oven or even a microwave. They are the perfect salty snack, with enough heft to nearly be a meal – ideal to keep punters in the pub, while also keeping them from getting, well, messy. And here in Ireland, they could be paired with some absolutely phenomenal local cheeses, or even cheese dips. Yes, there are excellent pretzels at the Guinness Open Gate, but outside of Oktoberfest season, when there are some pretzel specials, they are essentially the only pretzel game in town.
WE CAN DO BETTER.
There are even pretzel beers in our former Pennsylvania stomping grounds in America (though I must confess that the Philadelphia version of the soft pretzel is not my favourite – sorry/not sorry), but really, it’s more about pairing the gently-warmed pretzel with the beer. Well, and the salt. The salt is not unimportant here. Arguably, that’s what I find missing from the toastie, which, perhaps, best fills the pretzel spot in the hospitality ecosystem in Ireland. I do enjoy a good toastie, but the saltiness of the pretzel is a big part of its appeal.
It’s possible I have looked into what it would cost to import frozen pretzels from Germany and decided that it’s not worthwhile to keep them in my personal freezer (if anything, they would be immediately consumed by the rest of the family), but a locally-produced option that supplied area pubs would be amazing. It would be the perfect excuse to stop into a pub for a midweek snack, without having to fork out for an entire dinner – a pretzel is good any time of day or night.
We are, again, fortunate that we have many pubs with great food options beyond the standard burger-and-chips pub grub (as well as some truly excellent burgers – The Old Spot burger is wonderful) – there’s tasty Asian street food at The Barber’s Bar and Hynes’ Bar, and lots of carvery options. While I don’t personally understand the appeal of a carvery, clearly, they are very popular here, but pretzels, nope.
It’s now been a good many months since I last had a soft pretzel** (in Zurich, for the record, after some work things and an impromptu tour of the FIFA Museum in which not a single person tried to bribe me), but fortunately, I do have more pretzels on the horizon in the near future, as I’m off to Germany on holiday.
Perhaps everyone could compare recipes while I’m out of town, and surprise me when I get home? I’d be happy to taste-test any and all efforts…
*For reasons not entirely clear even to me, I cannot see the words ‘pub food’ without hearing my brain repeat it, to the tune of Lovefool by The Cardigans – this is especially odd as my favourite Cardigans songs are Carnival and Hey! Get Out Of My Way, from 1995’s Life. This remains, objectively, their best album. People holding other opinions on this subject are simply wrong.
** Yes, there are Auntie Anne’s pretzels in Ireland, but no, those don’t count, as they are, frankly, garbage, and not available in pubs.
