-
Why do the English have this thing about the Irish and potatoes ? Oh yes because it’s a culturally engrained stereotype from when they, at best, watched on as a million Irish died of hunger when the famine hit and another million had to emigrate.
Lazy racist trope.In my case I've never had a thing about potatoes and the Irish.
However, my wife (who's from Kildare), and her best friend from school (so also Kildare), and a former colleague of hers (from Dublin), and her husband (also Kildare) definitely have a thing about potatoes.
Extra potatoes - more than I ever thought reasonable - are a requirement if we're cooking dinner together. Extra potatoes will be ordered if we're out for dinner in a restaurant that serves potatoes.
Every wedding I've been to in Ireland has featured extra potatoes (disappointingly, generally only three ways, boiled, roast and mash), brought round time after time by waiting staff who have little difficulty unloading their burden onto the already potato-rich plates of willing guests.
So IM(undoubtedly limited)E it may be a trope, it may be a stereotype, it may be culturally engrained, and it's almost certainly based on the colonially-forced export of grains, but nonetheless it's based on fact.
Would you like another chip?
jsabine-
disappointingly, generally only three ways, boiled, roast and mash
During childhood holidays at my great grandfather's in Cork I only ever used to get those gross boiled then partially oven dried things.
Always totally baffled me why you'd spend more effort to make a potato taste worse.
But I only remember breakfasts being potato-free. However, times have probably changed. Ireland has changed a lot.
-
Extra potatoes will be ordered if we're out for dinner in a restaurant that serves potatoes.
Last time I was in Dublin was for a stag do and every restaurant we ate at had at least 3 different types of potato on every main course and hardly any other veg. Even the Irish lads there kept saying that they've got to eat 5 of their one a day.
-
The potatoe trope is not routed in a current relationship between Irish people and spuds.
It is a jab in the ribs about the potato famine. Whether people realise this is the case or not is moot. It is only in the English common psyche because of the famine.
I often see sides of gratin, mash or chips on restaurant menus as sides to mains in the Uk and France.
Unconcious bias anyone?
hugo7
Gewürzt
CheBeef
Why do the English have this thing about the Irish and potatoes ? Oh yes because it’s a culturally engrained stereotype from when they, at best, watched on as a million Irish died of hunger when the famine hit and another million had to emigrate.
Lazy racist trope.