A Taste Of Home

Molly Malone’s
Hiroshima City

I love Japan. I’ll start off with that little titbit. Its delightful tweeness, obsessive compulsion and bizarre yet somehow endearing traditions all make it a really quite enchanting place to live. And despite probably boring the hell out of my lovely young comrade and guide Manami this weekend with my platitudes of Merry England, I really am warming to the ways of the East.

And yet, any seasoned traveller knows that after any length of time away from the motherland, one does find oneself longing for the comforts of home. So, after stocking up on the basics (cheese, chocolate and taco shells) at Hiroshima’s treasure trove of foreign delicacies, Jupiter (see my previous Hiroshima entry for more details), Manami and I sought out the Gaijin Mecca that is Molly Malone’s Irish Pub.

Despite some good recommendations from other Westerners, I had my reservations about Malone’s; having had some bad runs with “British pubs” such as the Hub in Tokyo, and some others in Fukuoka, all of which were pale imitations serving Japanese fusion food, I was uncertain as to what to expect from Hiroshima’s offering.

Any initial reservations were cast aside however as we entered the pub to the creaky tones of The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” blasting out of the stereo system. Walking into Malone’s I was instantly transported 10,000 miles home; an authentic interior (made up of furnishings shipped over from the Emerald Isle itself) is complimented by that wonderfully homely “pub smell” that only the real McCoy can achieve. The fact that of the thirty or so patrons, Manami was the only Asian, was also curiously reassuring.

Settling down with a much longed for Magners on ice, we were presented with a menu of some real pub classics; steak and ale pie, taverner’s chicken, and, being Sunday, the mandatory roast dinner. After a salivating ten minutes or so, I finally decided upon my old favourite bangers and mash (though somewhat tentatively, as sausages in Japan by definition alone suck), along with a side of homemade soda bread and some garlic ciabatta. Manami, alas not all too adventurous in her ventures into British cuisine (although, to be fair she did wolf down my homemade “British” classic Spag Bol with much aplomb) chose the stonebaked pizza and a vegetable salad.

The following thirty minutes were sheer gut-busting glory. Having missed hearty home-style cooking so very much recently, I was blown away by the authenticity that the chefs at Malone’s managed to create in what is essentially the complete opposite end of the Earth. The bangers and mash were exquisite; real pork and leek sausages with creamy mash and homemade gravy; the soda bread was beautifully stodgy, and even the pizza had that deliciously greasy publiness that the Asian excuses for pizzas really lack. Topped of with more Magners, I was fit to burst.

But of course, with a pudding menu consisting of such lovingly crafted delights as apple crumble and bread and butter pudding, there was no way I was giving up just yet. We decided after much deliberation on the Bailey’s cheesecake, one of my old favourites, and with painful delectation devoured every delicious morsel.

Molly Malone’s truly is a home away from home for the Gaijin community in Hiroshima, painstakingly researched and crafted to give the best British dining experience you are likely to find in Japan. Nothing Japanese on the menu, and with fluent English staff, you really do feel like you’ve stepped off the streets of Hiroshima right back to the motherland. Kudos to the creators; Malone’s is the perfect remedy for even the worse bout of homesickness.