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Duration:	2 hours

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The unique and absorbing Story of Irish Food tour 'Beefsteaks and Oysters as Usual' begins at the main gates of Trinity College and takes in Fishamble Street, the quays and bridges of the River Liffey, Dublin Castle, Temple Bar food market, Powerscourt House and Trinity College.

The tour looks at how feasting was a rite of pre-Christian religion. The arrival of Christianity in the fifth century emphasized diets that, as St Colmcille said, should nurture the body but do no injury to the soul. However, the monasteries evolved to offer high-end guest accommodation and the richest monastery in Dublin had its own fleet of ships to import exotic groceries. Beyond the coastal towns and monastery wall the cow remained a status symbol in a semi-nomadic society.

English propaganda points out that the Irish diet is deeply inferior. They eat horse, carrion and fistfuls of rancid butter rolled in bloodied jelly, colonists claim. 'Ireland ploughed will be Ireland civilized'. A new aristocracy becomes enamored with French fashions. The arrival of the fork puts the diner at a distance from the food. Dining is a cultural experience to which the physician and the philosopher is a valued guest. Jonathon Swift parodies food snobbery and discusses how to be a servant.

Learn how a decorative bedding plant (the potato) becomes the sole source of food for one-third of Ireland's population. In the middle of the 1840s Potato Famine, one Dublin restaurant advertises 'Beefsteaks and Oysters as Usual'. At Temple Bar food market you'll have the opportunity to sample Irish cheeses and oysters.

Also learn how to roast a hedgehog; St Patrick and the leek; how to foil the witch and milking hare; binge-drinking among townswomen; eighteenth-century thoughts on dieting; the packed lunch and the 1916 Rebellion; the magic broth and much more.