The "Red Bank" was a restaurant at 19-20 D'Olier Street, just
south of the O'Connell Bridge over the Liffey. It was also a
name for some famous oysters harvested in County Clare and
sold at the restaurant when they were in season.
In 1845 a man named Burton Bindon opened the restaurant under
his own name, but later he changed the name to Red Bank to
capitalize on the reputation of the oysters grown on beds that
he owned off the Clare coast (Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire, The
Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine
on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral
History, 2009: 100). In 1904 the Red Bank was known as
one of the finest restaurants in Dublin. The funeral cortège
in Hades passes by it just before crossing the
Liffey and traveling north along O'Connell Street. The
occupants of Bloom's carriage see Blazes Boylan "at
the door of the Red Bank," probably emerging after
lunch. Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, and Simon Dedalus all
try to attract his attention. Bloom looks at his fingernails.
Later, in Lestrygonians, Bloom processes some
thoughts about the supposed aphrodisiac effects of eating
oysters: "Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the
sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning. Was
he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed
no June has no ar no oysters." The thought is
apparently still on his mind in Circe when he "eats
twelve dozen oysters (shells included)," demonstrating
by this and sundry other miracles that he is indeed the
Messiah. In the same chapter his grandfather Virag, author of
the notable Fundamentals of Sexology, waxes
rhapsodic on aphrodisiacs: "Splendid! Spanish fly in his fly
or mustard plaster on his dibble. . . . Redbank
oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best
o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles
of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous
porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or
viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting."
Molly does not know that Boylan has lunched in the Red Bank,
but she too thinks about him eating oysters: "he must have
come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a
thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they
call it was going to burst though his nose is not so big after
I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours
dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or
some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must
have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in
great singing voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had
one the size of that to make you feel full up."
Thoughts about Red Bank oysters reach their lowest point in
the book when the narrator of Cyclops describes the
clot of phlegm that the Citizen ejects in response to Bloom
saying that he considers himself an Irishman: "The
citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet
and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the
corner."
