In this era of 6am rises, 10pm bed times, protein-loading, fibremaxxing and fitness tracking, is there a place for the humble carvery?
It's a question posed by Today with David McCullagh reporter Brian O'Connell, promoted for the day to Carvery Correspondent, after recently watching a bevy of diners file into a local pub for the carvery on a weekday afternoon in North Cork.
Read more: How many of Ireland's most popular carveries have you tried?
"It does hark back to an era when people had time to have a big dinner in the middle of the day", he said.
Carveries may not be as prevalent as they once seemed to be: the number of pubs across the country has declined in the last 25 years, O'Connell noted, no doubt curtailing the amount of heaping plates of beef, mash and gravy served up each day.
Before he got stuck into whether or not we're living in a post-carvery Ireland, O'Connell visited The Elm Tree in Glounthaune in Co Cork where he spoke to Executive Chef Jim Murphy about what makes a good carvery.
"I suppose freshness is everything", Murphy said. "Carvery is one of those mediums out there with food, it is true to say you eat with your eyes. When you sit down at an à la carte table and you order a meal, you're looking at a piece of paper, you're looking at a menu, and you're putting a bit of faith in what you're ordering.
"But with a carvery, you're coming up, you're looking at the food in front of you", he explained, adding that there's an "efficiency" to it and people can better control the way their meal is plated up.
Murphy suggested that there might be a link between the carvery and the kinds of dishes people would get at home: the meat, two veg and lashings of gravy.
Turning to a true man of the people, O'Connell spoke to content creator, foodie and podcaster James Kavanagh, who has become renowned for his annual Christmas Instagram series where he rates people's Christmas dinner.
"A carvery of a Sunday is kind of beautiful, actually", he said. "I feel it's popping back up again", he added, shouting out Dublin spot Caribou and their enormously popular weekend carvery. "You can't get a seat."
"Dinner in the middle of the day, it's kind of born from I guess people who are out very early, maybe working on farms and stuff like that."
The best time for a carvery, according to Kavanagh? The day after a big night out. "The ideal hangover dinner."
Kavanagh has a particular fondness for the "theatre" of the carvery: "Queueing up with your brown wooden cheap tray. I love personally, some people aren't into it, but the ice cream scoop mash. For some reason that kind of sings to me."
"I always get a gravy boat", he added. "I always want more."
Listen back to the full interview above.
