Granny Ella holding baby Michael in front of her home in the Short Strand neighborhood of Belfast, Ireland, in 1976.

Andytown’s cofounder, Michael McCrory, was 21 when he moved from Belfast, Northern Ireland, to the United States. Living as an undocumented immigrant, he took jobs mostly in the service industry—in bars, restaurants, and cafes. It wasn’t until he met his incredible wife (and humble blog author), Lauren Crabbe, that he started thinking seriously about starting a business of his own. In 2012, after Michael had gotten his green card, we took the leap into business ownership and signed a lease for a small space on Lawton Street. We named our business Andytown, after the neighborhood where Michael grew up in Belfast, and we committed to recreating some of Michael’s favorite foods from his childhood.

I sat down with Michael at our dining table to talk about his relationship with food, and how that connects him to his homeland of Ireland.

Lauren: Thank you for joining me today, in our dining room.

Michael: My pleasure.

I’m going to ask you some questions about soda bread! What is your earliest memory of soda farls?

My earliest memory of soda farls was going on a school trip when I was 5 years old, and watching these actors—I don’t know what are they called—you know when you go somewhere and they have actors that reenact history?

Historical reenactments?

Yes! And they were making soda farls on a stone. On a hearth on a fireplace. They had a special stone for it. That’s my first memory of it. We never really got soda farls in the South of Ireland—this trip was in the South of Ireland. (Note from Michael: I lived in Shannon for a while when he was a kid.) We would only ever get it when we would visit Belfast. And we’d mostly buy it at the bakery. But my Gran and Granny—everyone would make soda farls. But it wasn’t like all the time. It was more of a treat. Wheaten bread was the thing that was always made in everyone’s house.

Can you describe a food experience at your Granny’s house? What was it like as a kid, sitting at the table?

The fact that somebody was going out of their way to make something for me was really cool. But that kind of carried through forever. Any time I went over there, I was always hungry. She lived on the other side of the city, so I would pop over. I would take a bus over, literally hang out and make a giant sandwich and “see ya later!” It was where I had my first—it wasn’t a root beer float, but it was like a coca-cola float.

Who else would be at the table?

It wasn’t really a table experience. The table experience was at my Aunt Una’s house. That’s where me and my brother Gerard would go and there would be Una, Gerard, Frances, Gerard, Colum, Granny and Granda would be there. (Note from Michael: Yes, there are a lot of Gerards. My da is Gerard, my brother is a Gerard, my uncle is a Gerard, and my cousin is a Gerard.) Then my Uncle Pat would come in, Uncle Thomas would come in. Everyone would come in right around dessert time. So I remember big meals like that. That felt really cool. All the cousins together. Most of the big gatherings were around Christmas time, especially the day after Christmas because it was my Granny and Granda’s wedding anniversary. They got married on Boxing Day. All the kids would gather there for a second Christmas. Dinner over there was always a big deal. People were always through the house.

It wasn’t like we were sitting down and making soda bread. Bread was just made. It was just there and we would eat it. I don't think that it ever got the props that bread gets now. People now are like “oh my gosh, this person makes bread!” No. It was like. If you want bread, you’re making it. Or you’re buying a sliced loaf. There were lots of bread you could buy, but some people liked to make it, you know? And it was never like an inclusive “oh, let’s all go make bread.” It was just like “oh, you made some wheaten bread. Great!” or “oh, you made some soda. Great!” or “Why don’t you just buy the soda bread? You can buy it at the shop for a pound for four of ‘em!”

Let’s talk about our first trip to Ireland together. It was in like 2012 or 2011. And you had just gotten your Green Card so we made the decision to go back to Ireland and visit your family. If I recall correctly, Andytown as a company or a concept was not in our minds at a time. We were just collecting the recipes for ourselves to make at home.

It was more of a getting…. Well, people were starting to get old and die.

[Laughter] Your Aunt Una is going to kill you if she reads this.

No no! It’s about trying to hold on to some of those things. I’m just telling you. You don’t have to print this.

I think it’s fun to print things like this.

But, no. It’s definitely in my head.

The idea of legacy, and of food. And recording our family histories while people are still alive. It’s important.

Yeah it is.

Well, we started our recipe collection at your Aunt Una’s house. Which is across the street from your Granny’s house.

And down the street from my Uncle Thomas’ house and down the street from my Uncle Pat’s house and Harry when he was alive lived down on the other side of the street. And my Granny lived next door to her sister. And we had my cousin Therese, who called my Granny her Ma, she had Downs Syndrome. She was a hoot.

Granny Ella with Michael’s cousin Therese Walsh. (~Early ‘90s.)

Lauren: So everyone on that street is basically related to you?

Michael: It felt safe on the street. Even if you got attacked, which I did quite a bit walking over there. But I knew that I would have help. I had been going there for years and I’d be walking down the street and kids would start throwing stones at me because they didn’t know me. [laughter] Yeah. Literally coming to visit my granny and kids are throwing stones at me and trying to fight with me because they didn’t recognize me from the neighborhood. That was a thing!

So it’s safe to say that your Granny’s house was a safe haven.

Yeah. For a lot of things. For a lot of people.

Back to soda bread. We started our journey for the soda bread recipe at your aunt’s house. I recall the measurements were a little challenging.

Mmmhmmm. I wrote them down, and it was like “a cup of flour, a pinch of salt, a pinch of bicarb, buttermilk. Put it on the pan until it’s done.” [laughter]

That is exceptionally hard to scale. [laughter] The wheaten bread recipe we got from Aunt Una was super different from Aunt Frances. One had eggs, one didn’t. They both had a flour that I had never heard of.

Yes. One had egg and butter, one didn’t. And they both needed whole meal flour, which basically was a flour milled to contain the bran and germ. Whereas most flours here separate those and you have the buy them separately and add it back in.

I recall getting both of those recipes and getting back home—just ourselves in the house—trying to recreate the texture and consistency of wheaten flour. We went and bought some Bobs Red Mill wheat flour and wheat germ and wheat bran a tried to measure it together and then the buttermilk we bought didn’t have the same acidity as the buttermilk they had over there. And it was just a sticky mess.

Yeah it was little bit of work to adapt it for here, but I think that’s the same for anything. You work with the ingredients that are local and not necessarily try to make the exact same thing, but try to represent it the best you can. And I think we really did that with our soda bread.

Let’s talk about the soda farl. What is a soda farl? Describe it.

A farl is a fourth. I think it’s an old Scots Gaelic Word. You’ve heard of the “the Firth of Forth?”

What? No one’s heard of that! [laugher]

[laughter] It’s like a section across Scotland with a big river. It doesn’t matter.

Basically, the farl was a round that was cut in fourths. And soda is bicarb—bicarbonate soda, baking soda. And it was just a really easy way to make bread. Historically, they would make their own type of buttermilk. There’s many ways to make it.

Growing up, I would just eat soda bread in a fry. When we lived in the South, people would come and visit us from the North and they would bring us all the breads. They would bring us little pancakes, called crumpets—basically silver dollar pancakes but fluffier and sweeter. They would bring us soda farls—packaged from the store. And they would bring us potato bread. And then probably a Belfast Bap and some Batch loaf which is a kind of white bread but really delicious and hearty. And we would make a fry with them.

You get a shallow fry pan. And you make a fry out of bacon, sausage, and eggs and mushrooms. And on the side there would be some beans and tomatoes, and then there would be some fried white pudding and fried black pudding. And then after it’s cooked, they would literally just get the breads and just stick them in the oil and fry them in the oil. It was a little much for me, but I ate it a lot. And then we’d always have soda bread in the house to make a ham and cheese soda—just butter, ham and cheese. Simple. Toast it up with jam.

A traditional Irish fry, made by Michael’s da Sean on our trip in 2012. (Note from Michael: Yes, I kind of have two dads. And one great mom. Don’t worry about it. We’ll save that story for another day.)

Michael: It’s very commercialized now. You can buy a package of soda farls for like two pounds, or three pounds. Maybe even cheaper. And they are very thin and they are consistent and they are good and they’ll probably last a week and a half because of the preservatives. But, it never really matched what people would make at home. Because it doesn’t have any of the preservatives, [commercial soda farls] had more of a doughy feel to it. Thin and doughy. Where I feel like when we started to make it, it got big and fluffy. And that was unusual for me to see because I had never seen soda bread in a shop like that.

Some of the fondest memories I have are of me and my mate Mickey, on a Saturday, going to buy a fry for a pound fifty at the little market. The guy had a dog with a glass eye and he himself had a glass eye. And we would sit there and we would get either endless cups of tea or endless cups of coffee. And we were like two 15-year-old kids at like a market bar at the back of Castle Court. It was a great place. You could buy old guitars, there was like army surplus stores. But, they had this little spot for the fries and it was a pound fifty and it would fill you up and it was good. And soda bread flies through all those memories for me. It’s a good one.

Lauren: I remember every pub we went to, you’d order a stew and get a very generous serving of wheaten bread and butter.

Wheaten bread is an easy thing to make, but when you’re at a bar, most of them are not making wheaten bread. Because it’s so good and so cheap to buy. Why would you make it? Until you try my Aunt Frances’ or my Aunt Una’s wheaten bread. Which is different than everyone else’s.

This is the point—everyone makes a version of soda bread, and everyone makes a version of wheaten bread. They are not necessarily what you are going to get when you buy it in a store, and they are never really the same.

Remember old Jimmy O’Neils wife? When we went and she was like “oh I just put something together for ya” and she had a whole spread of scones, wheaten bread and potato bread, and she just made all of that. So, I think having something that is historically made and that is passed down through generations is really cool.

And think that part of my life at that time was trying to reestablish my connection to my people and my culture. Because I was finally coming to peace to who I was. I think I had my teenage angst until I was like 30. [laughter] Where I just hated everything about my life and who I was. I didn’t like identifying with my culture and my past. I don’t really know what that was. But I think it was just unprocessed teenage angst. There you go.

There you go. You were drowning your angst with whiskey for too long.

If it was only whiskey, it would have been fine. [laughter] We don’t need to get into details.

So the journey of the soda farls…

Yes, let’s go back to that. The recipe I got was from my Aunt Frances, who said that this was my Granny’s recipe. But my cousin Frances, Una’s daughter, said “there’s no way that it was my Granny’s recipe because she wouldn’t make it like that." And she said that it was probably my Gran’s recipe. And I was like—my Gran did make soda bread but so did my Granny. So here is where the lore lies of who owns what and who’s is better than what.

And by the way, that was always the topic of conversation at Una’s house for dinner—the competition. It was like, “oh is Frances making dessert?” and the death stare would come from Una. Like, they are both phenomenal cooks. And they are both phenomenal bakers. Like, ridiculously good. And they make identical recipes that they inherited from their mom and they do their own version of it and they are both really good.

So what I decided to do, because we are out in California with different ingredients, was to do our version of their version of that version. And take the best of both of it. And that’s how the soda bread came to. The soda bread was very simple. I have it written down somewhere, in my little red book that I keep losing. And that’s that. And we brought it over here and none of it really worked or translated.

[Laughter] It was a disaster.

So, we just worked with it. I didn’t know differences between flours. I was like “isn’t it just flour??” At home it was just the one flour.

So doing our version of that bread was really important to what I thought the identity of Andytown was. And what it represented. And I think it’s been very successful to hold onto it.

Yeah when we started we just had two induction burners and two cast iron pans and it took like 40 minutes per loaf. So we could only do like 12 loaves a day, tops.

We were making them all day long. After the bake off, they would just start making soda farls. “They!” By “they” I mean you. And Gina, Melisa, Trevor, Jenn, Caitlin, Ali, Michelle. All the people who have come through. They all need props. All the people who have contributed to this journey of holding on to something that meant more than eating. It meant more than putting something in your belly.

It was constructed on a very simple idea of being able to eat. You know? It’s kind of funny. It’s a full cycle. You remove the element of necessity from food. And all of a sudden you have something that has so much history, yet you can make it your own as well.

Yeah.

I think that’s it. Thank you.

Thank you.