Saoirse Ronan Brings These Two Comfort Foods While Traveling

There’s something humanizing about knowing what a celebrity eats. It’s an insight into their real life — a part of their world that you can literally taste. Luckily for fans of Little Women or Ladybird, we now know more about Irish-American actress and certifiable queen Saoirse Ronan’s favorite flavors.

Ronan recently appeared on Table Manners, the food podcast hosted by mother-and-daughter duo Jessie and Lennie Ware, to chat about everything from her latest films, Blitz and The Outrun, to her viral comments on BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show — and, most importantly, the two ingredients she always brings with her while filming.

The Golden Globe Award-winning actor discussed how much she travels for work, prompting the hosts to ask, “What do you take with you? What are your kind of comforts whilst you’re away?” The two items Ronan named in response might sound familiar to anyone from the United Kingdom: Marmite Graze and Barry’s Tea. 

Marmite Graze is a crunchy packaged snack composed of dried broad beans, roasted corn kernels (similar to a corn nut), and corn hoops (basically a tube-shaped corn chip) coated in a yeast extract seasoning. The seasoning is what channels the flavor of Marmite — the dark, salty spread made from yeast extract, which produces its signature earthy and deeply savory taste. It’s known for being polarizing — people either love or hate Marmite — and there are a few other brands that make similar yeast spreads, which have their own cult followings, like its Australian counterpart, Vegemite. 

Although Ronan takes Marmite Graze wherever she travels — she says, “I always bring those away with me” — she also notes to the Wares that she’s “a Vegemite girl” at heart. Her love for the condiment started two years ago when she was in Australia, first trying it on top of avocado toast. So if you want to learn to like it, that might be a good place to start.

Enjoying Marmite or Vegemite on toast is the most common way to eat either one, although most people enjoy it on plain buttered toast. Florence Pugh famously showed the world how she makes her Marmite toast on her YouTube series “Cooking With Flo” in 2020, where she explained that the yeast spread should be treated more like a seasoning and less like Nutella or peanut butter. This means you don’t want to slather on a thick layer; instead, you should use a lot of butter and put only a few dabs of Marmite on top, treating it like you would salt.

When she’s not enjoying Vegemite on avocado toast or Marmite-seasoned snacks, Ronan’s other source of comfort is Barry’s Tea, which has been made in Ireland since 1901 — so it’s no surprise that it reminds her of home. She explains to the podcast hosts that “I do bring [tea] away with me. Barry’s Tea…. Barry’s Irish Tea or Yorkshire Gold.”

Ronan says that she prefers a strong tea. (Barry’s Tea — a golden-colored blend that’s the most popular tea in Ireland — and Yorkshire Gold are both made with black teas.) Barry’s gold blend, in particular, is known for being strong, with one Redditor proclaiming that it “does the job in being strong and bracing and waking me up. It’s not a delicate tea to linger over and savor the flavor — it’s good, hearty tea to swig down in a rush before heading to work.”

It’s safe to say that with a few cups a day, it’s easy for her to stay caffeinated on set and embody the feeling of being in the U.K. by pairing a cup with a crunchy Marmite snack.