Lithuania in Dublin: Sampling a little bit of their food and culture

This past Friday, we chose to head to the Embassy of Lithuania in Dublin. As a part of the Culture Night celebrations, the Lithuanian Embassy had opened its doors for an evening of traditional cuisine, music and national costumes.

The Culture Night is an really amazing concept — organised by the Arts Council of Ireland, it’s all about celebrating culture, creativity and the arts. Most of the events organised as a part of the Culture Night are free, and it takes place across towns, villages and locations across Ireland. It’s very popular, and it’s claimed that about 742,000 people engaged with 1,700 Culture Night events in 2022!

When we first moved to Ireland (gosh, that will be almost five years this November), we picked two free events to attend. Both were walking tours, and we so enjoyed the storytelling, and charm of walking through Dublin’s historic streets and alleys, gaining an insight into the people, places and stories that inhabited Dublin, and how they shaped what Dublin is today. I will always remember ‘discovering’ the bench with the inscription on the river Liffey: ‘This bench is dedicated to those proud and true Irishmen and women, who have lived with a terrible secret; they don’t like Guinness.’ It certainly made me laugh!

This year, we chose to go the Lithuanian Embassy. What appealed to us was the fact that this way, we will ‘travel’ to Lithuanian — if you know what I mean. We may never be able to tick off all the countries that we want to visit, and the world is full of so many wonderful places, people and culture. We don’t know any Lithuanians and what would be our chances of being able to sample a little bit of their culture and food? None, really.

So off we went. The embassy is situation at 7 Ailesbury Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin. It’s on a road with lots of other embassies, all housed in beautiful, large and rather posh properties. Most of the properties are sheltered by mature trees, and have spacious front porches and you can see a glimpse of the kind of space that the backyard would boast of as well. I looked at those mansions, and imagined the sprawling gardens, and also imagined what it must be like to live in one of those? At one point, I stood and stared (one of the mansions was rather breath-taking), and then I thought, “How many bathrooms would it host, and god, I have trouble keeping two bathrooms clean. This must need an army.”)

The husband and I, walked thus. Leisurely. Taking in the views. We were early, and the evening was pleasant. I was wearing a bright green dress that was teamed up with ethnic Indian earrings. On the top of the dress, I had an equally bright purple jacket and my husband couldn’t help but remark that I had teamed two very loud colours on. Well….It was what it was.

We did feel a tad self-conscious as we stepped into the Embassy’s garden where a marquee had been set up. To be fair, we were the only people of colour at the event. Most of the attendees were Lithuanians, but there was a very sweet young woman behind one of the counters. She was dressed in a traditional Lithuanian outfit and something about her smile and demeanour was very reassuring. She took the time out to tell us about the food, how it would be traditionally consumed back home in Lithuania and every time we had a question or two, she was always ready to have a conversation with us.

The food was set up on beautifully decorated tables (the theme of the décor seemed to be an ode to autumn). There were cured meats, cheeses, sweets, rye bread and many other traditional foods and beverages. There was also a display of how authentic Šakotis (Tree cake) is made in Lithuania. Šakotis means “branched” and it has a distinctive shape. It’s baked by painting layers of batter onto a rotating spit over a wood-burning fire in a special oven.

We thought the oven was simply beautiful, and we stood there, feeling warm, and transported. All the different colours, the notes of various accents falling gently on our ears, the warmth from the food stove and the food itself of course — we felt as if we were in a house party in Lithuania.

Here are some pictures from the evening. In the first one, you can see the sweet lady who was very friendly and welcoming. She explained to us that the cheese is a sweet cheese, very popular in the countryside in Lithuania, and is had with a sour and sweet sauce. If you happen to be visiting your grandmother in Lithuania, chances are that she would almost always have this cheese in her kitchen. Right below that cheese is a picture of apple cheese. We were told that the colour may vary from the kind of apples it was made with. (It was delicious and had the texture of a candied fruit.) The mushroom shaped sweets (third from the right, first row) are called Grybukai. These are made from flour, honey, spices, sugar and poppy seeds, and were a great hit with children. The last picture in the blog is from the special oven that the embassy had set up in its grounds/garden, and you can see how the tree bread is made. We were told that the tree bread is so popular that you find shops at most Lithuanian airports that would stock and sell this bread for tourists and Lithuanians who wanted to make a last minute purchase before they boarded their flights.

My husband has a sweet tooth, and he happily sampled quite a few of the sweet offerings and two fermented Lithuanian beverages. On our way back home, he said, “Thank you for getting me here. I wanted to turn back, and go home whilst we were catching the bus. If we had done so, I would have missed out on this little Lithuanian adventure.”

(My husband is an introvert and would rather stay at home, or go on walks on hills and other places than walk into a room full of people he didn’t know. )