My first job in the industry was in Snaffles in Leeson Street in Dublin, a very classy establishment where the money and the gentry dined in the seventies and eighties.

One of our most colourful clients was Lady Cusack-Smith , master of the Galway Blazers , I wrote the following about her some years ago ;

Molly, Lady Cusack Smith was a frequent costumer and a loyal fan of the restaurant. When a member of her party once spotted a fly in the gravy and started to point it out she instantly raised the jug to her lips, downed it and the fly in one go and said , regally, “More Gravy John!”

There is a wonderful story told about the same Lady Cusack Smith, a lady who in her day was such a beauty that Harrods obtained her permission to use her portrait on the tin in which they packed their fruit cake and called it “Molly O Rourke” in her honour. The story was that Lady Smith, for many years master of the Galway Blazers, arrived back from the hunt one hay with her horse covered in sweat and obviously exhausted. Her reply to the groom, who said “Jaysus Maam you have him in a terrible lather” was a classic.
“So would you be my good man if you had been between my thighs for the last four hours”

Bermingham

She lived in Bermingham House in Tuam which when times were hard she used to run as a sort of Manor House Bed and Breakfast.

When ever I fear that I am not giving my guests here in France enough tender loving care I think of another story about her.

Some wealthy Americans came into Snaffles one evening for dinner and got talking to John, the Maitre d’.
They had, they told John , just come from a night with Lady Smith in Bermingham.
“How did you get on ?” asked John.
“Well…, It was an amazing house and she was an astonishing woman; but we found the food a little inadaquate ”
“Oh?” said John- surprised and knowing that Molly was a Cordon Bleu cook.
” Well for dinner ” they told John “She gave us boiled eggs ”