A bottle of Bucky down the Arch?
The Dough Bros and Kai are bringing Galway's millennial generation on a trip down memory lane.
If you grew up in Galway, there's a good chance you've experienced the buzz of downing a bottle of Buckfast or a bag of cans at Spanish Arch. Each summer, young people would gather in droves before heading to venues like GPO, Cuba, CPs, or wherever would let them in. The memories might be hazy, but that sickly sweet taste of tonic wine from Buckfast Abbey sticks with you.
Around a decade after my first (and only) bottle of Buckfast, I enrolled in a Master’s in Gastronomy and Food Studies at TU Dublin, where I explored the surge in nostalgic foods emerging during the pandemic. While brands went out with the new and in with the old, consumers began to crave comforting classics like rice pudding baked by their grandmother or Lara Hanlon’s reminiscent piece about potatoes in Issue One: Mementoes of Food. Food writer Grace Dent even turned the rise in comfort consumption into a book and podcast.
While these comfort foods can offer solace during times of unease, as repeatedly observed in our first issue, they can also be a bit of craic. For The Dough Bros and Kai, the nostalgia trend materialised in the form of a pizza collaboration made with lamb shawarma, tahini ranch, and Buckfast hot sauce. The partnership proved to be a big hit for the hyped pizzeria, prompting owners Eugene and Ronan to raise the stakes by packaging their at-home kits and offering free nationwide delivery across Ireland. The regular menu items remain consistent, but each month, the duo rejuvenates their offerings with a monthly special edition kit.
Following the success of their initial venture, The Dough Bros has once again teamed up with Jessica Murphy from Kai to evoke memories among Galway's youth, though that generation has since matured and bottles of Buckfast have been replaced with unpleasant hangovers and the responsibilities of adulthood. In anticipation of this inevitability, the brothers joined forces with illustrator Stephen Heffernan and Tipple to provide a light-hearted hangover cure alongside their internationally acclaimed pizza bases topped with Connemara lamb slow-cooked in Dutch Gold, Bucky hot sauce, and extras like Middle Eastern spices and pickled mayo.
The Dough Bros x Kai Home Pizza Kits are available here throughout the month of May, with optional add-ons such as dips and drinks. Don’t forget: they offer free nationwide delivery.