It's not red it's fucking purple!

Ah the unmistakable crunch of another lunch ruined by this purple curse. The order was simple. "Ham special on brown" said I cheerfully, taking my seat like a clueless passenger on the train to hell.
It arrived as I expected. Nothing to tingle the 'spidey sense'. And then the bite. Crisp toasted bread gave way to the soft compliance of melted cheese and the slighly rubbery texture of sliced ham, and then the crunch.

An onion.

A fucking onion.

A red fucking onion.

There came a time in the Celtic Tiger-catalysed culinary revolution in Ireland - I'd estimate some time between it being acceptable to pay over £2 for a coffee and the arrival of the first Ciabatta in the country - where someone, somewhere, brought back a red onion from the continent.

And oh how their friends must have marvelled. Here was a vegetable with all the eye-watering potency of a regular onion, but with actual colour. No longer would you have to hold a slice up to the light to see if it was an onion or a finely-chopped piece of iceberg lettuce.

And so the Irish salad, still in its infancy mind, gained a dash of colour and a potency of taste comparable to smothering a Rich Tea biscuit in curry sauce.

Now I know I am in a minority in not liking the taste of raw onions. Its culinary versatility I do not doubt. Included in a stew or casserole, I would not find fault with the taste.

But a raw onion is a bully. Stick a raw onion in any dish where it is not cooked and you might as well punch them in the face.

Getting back to the salad. The red onion, with it's 'look at me' parlour trick of actually having colour, started the slippery slope down which the Irish salad has been tossed since the mid 90s.

It is now not surprising to go to a restaurant, order a salad, and be unable to tell what half the plants in your bowl actually are. There are now so many mixed leaves - Rocket this and Radicchio that - in the average salad, some of them must surely be endangered.

And then we have the finely chopped salads. Picking large chunks of onions out of a salad which mostly consists of large chunks is a manageable, if vexing, task.

Chasing miniscule slivers of onion around an ice-rink of vinagrette with a fork which is clearly not up to the task is enough to drive a man to be a carnivore.

But the worst sinners are those who put onions unannounced into sandwiches, and then gawk at you with a "well doesn't everyone?" look when you try to explain that their menu does not comply with the trade descriptions act.

If you're going to put onions in a sandwich, signal your intention clearly on the menu. Don't slide a slice or two in and expect us not to notice. It's a fucking raw onion for Christ Sakes!

You wouldn't put down on your menu "bottle of water, €2" and then forget to mention that you put a measure of vodka in every bottle.

If you have a little disclaimer at the bottom which says "Be advised that all sandwiches come with red onions", then I have only myself to blame if I miss it and get tricked into clamping down on a sliver of the Devil's bulb.

And while we're at it, onions, red or otherwise, have no place in coleslaw. Coleslaw is about texture. You add it to sandwiches, you dollop it on your chips, you heap it on your plate, because its texture is different to anything else on the plate.

Coleslaw is meant to be texture, not taste. Do not put onions in it.

And another thing. Red onions aren't red. They're fucking purple.