A taste for life

Joanne McNally’s life in food

What did your mother make you?

Brown bread, coffee cake and paranoid.

What is the meal you will always remember?

My mom used to bake knickers into our birthday cakes. It’s not a meal per se, but it’s a very strong memory.

What’s the first dish you ever cooked?

I don’t cook. It’s very bad. I do like to microwave, though. I microwave a very good egg.

What is your hangover cure?

Bananas and toasted brown bread, although I don’t get hangovers. It’s weird. I think I’ve built up such an immunity to booze, my body just assumes it’s normal.

What do you drink?

Anything transparent that won’t kill me. So water, gin, Kahlua, things like that.

You can only eat three things for the rest of your life, what are they?

That depends. If it’s a fantasy world where no food has health consequences, I would happily live off chips, chicken balls and vanilla slices. But in the real world, I would live off salmon ramen, chicken tikka sandwiches and vanilla slices.

What is the most appetising smell in the world?

Lynx Africa on lads. It sends me loo-lah.

How important is food to you?

It’s grand. I like it but I grew up with a fairly intense eating disorder, so the relationship can be strained, but I reckon most people are the same.

What is your guilty pleasure?

Marlboro Lights. Although I’m on the vape now, so I think I’m practically a health nut.

You can go anywhere and have anything to eat with any one person. Where, what and who?

I’d go to Super Miss Sue on Drury Street for brunch with the girls. I can’t choose one girl, so ideally we’d get a table for 35. They do the most amazing Bloody Mary. It comes with a fat prawn in it.

Favourite restaurant in Ireland?

Zakura on Camden Street. I eat in there on my own all the time. The salmon miso ramen is my favourite. Plus the music is very odd. It’s a mix of the wedding march and Radiohead. It’s relaxing.

“In an ideal world, I’d eat Kinder Buenos for breakfast, but it’s a cruel world so I eat porridge”

And abroad?

Pret A Manger in the UK. It’s McDonalds for sandwiches, but I love it. I microwave my meals though, so I’m not exactly Rachel Allen.

What’s your sweet treat?

Vanilla slices and caramel Freddos. Massive.

What’s your signature dish?

Em. I make a very nice Old Fashioned. Are you careful about what you eat? Yes, relatively so. I have to be or I lose my mind. It’s more about control, so I can’t let other people make me stuff. I have to prepare it myself. Unless I’m out.

Are there any foods you have had to cut down on that you miss?

In an ideal world, I’d eat Kinder Buenos for breakfast, but it’s not an ideal world, it’s a cruel world, so I eat porridge.

Catch Joanne McNally at the Vodafone Comedy Festival at The Jokeshop, Thursday July 27, and with Tommy Tiernan at the Big Red, Iveagh Gardens, on Sunday, July 30. See vodafonecomedy.com

In conversation with Sophie White