When flying with Ryanair, the maximum weight for a checked bag is 20 kilograms. When I move back to Dublin from Rome at the end of every summer, I usually travel with one 10kg and two 20kg suitcases. Among the thick jumpers to fend off the implacable Irish weather and the books to fend off the implacable tempest of English Studies essays, 10 kgs of my luggage is always reserved for food. This can range from cookies and jars of pesto – easy to find in any Tescos or Dunnes – to chunks of parmesan cheese and Gaeta olives, which I still haven’t figured out where to get in Dublin. 

I know I am not the only one struggling with finding their native food. Since the beginning of first year, I have taken countless IKEA trips with my Icelandic friend and flatmate so that she could find the Scandinavian food that would remind her of home. We’d hop on the 140 bus with bags full of gingerbread, rye bread and fried onions. We managed to make an uncomfortable situation – adjusting to a new country with completely different customs – a girls’ trip.

Stereotypical Italian that I am, I suffered a lot my first months here when I couldn’t find my comfort food. The first time I finished the Italian food supply that I had brought with me, I immediately went on a hunt to find the same identical Italian goods I was used to, but soon found myself disappointed. I had just arrived in Dublin and was still not acquainted with its food culture. But, now, I have aces up my sleeve. 

Specifically, it is my father who took it upon himself to make sure I come to Ireland with nostalgic tokens in the shape of grocery bags. For two years now, a couple of days before I leave, he stumbles home with our supermarket’s sacks full of fresh goods, most times weighing much more than the 10 kilos my luggage will accommodate. Under the raised eyebrow of my mother, who instead – practical woman that she is – would send me off with a couple of cookies for the journey and goodbye kisses, my father starts listing all the things he’s bought. That one pesto sauce was on sale – how could he leave it there? What if I don’t find anything like that in Dublin? 

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that pesto is one of the few things I have been able to find easily enough here in Dublin, because I see that buying groceries for me is his heartwarming way to connect even when I am three thousand kilometres across Europe. The epitome of this form of affection was the first time my parents came to visit me. The one landmark my father insisted on visiting was not Saint Patrick’s Cathedral or the National Gallery. Instead, he wanted to experience the wildlife of Rathmines’ supermarkets. We passed through the two Tescos on Rathmines Street Upper, the Dunnes inside the Swan Shopping Centre and the Aldi in front of the Leisure Centre to check the prices of various food, what wheat the loaves of bread were made out of and whether there were any Italian brands of anything, really. 

By now, well into my Senior Freshman Year, I have pinpointed a few grocery shops where I can buy ingredients to make basic comfort meals from my home country, or something resembling them. It is pretty easy to find Italian brands of pasta, like De Cecco, in any supermarket chain around the city. However, De Cecco is quite pricey compared to the 79 cents Dunnes-brands or the one euro fifty Tesco tortellini and gnocchi, which work just as well. Italian pesto is another easy-find, above all the Barilla brand, but the same cannot be said about any other condiment or sauce. Most of what is labelled ‘Italian’ or ‘Mediterranean’ in big supermarket chains – like pizza sauce or mushroom sauce – are not anything I would actually eat back home, and therefore are of little use to me to cook comfort dishes. Luckily, there are smaller shops that mend this gap. 

NOMS, a tiny wooden-tiled shop on North Circular Road leading down to Phibsboro, sells a wide range of goods, including pricey but nicely prepared salsas and vegetables. 

In Rathmines, there are two places that helped me to get through the first-year nostalgic blues. Lawlor’s Butchers, at the beginning of Rathmines Road Upper, sells fresh meat and one essential brand of Italian tomato sauce, Mutti. But my favourite tomato sauce – De Cecco – is only sold, at least to my knowledge, in Greenville Deli, a bistro right next to the Swan Centre. I remember the first time I entered, looking only to obtain a muffin or a croissant for breakfast, when I noticed shelves full of proper Italian tomato sauce. My heart somersaulted at the sight. Just last week, though, the lovely manager of the shop gave me the tragic news that the bottle I was buying was the last one available, and that she was still pondering whether to restock. I might have tried to puppy-eye her into making the right decision. 

Now that I have managed to collect enough goods to resemble a proper Italian grocery shop, I have had to learn to actually cook the aforementioned comfort dishes. In fact, the second thing I will be forever grateful for – after small food businesses – is Tiktok’s cooking accounts. Although my father has tried to teach me a few recipes, my poor culinary skills mean that I have to simplify most of them. Instead, I have learned, through TikTok, some typical recipes with few ingredients, like pan fried spaghetti, for which you only need a pan, spaghetti, tomato sauce and a good resilience to boiling hot oil. 

It is true that the convenience of quick online recipes are apt for student lifestyles and budgets such as my own. But what adds most of the flavour to my dinners and lunches is listening to my father’s Spotify playlists of Italian songwriters, which, curiously, is the same music I am listening to while writing this piece.