In Galway after Tuesday's experiment with Orange Roughy, diners in the Fianna Fáil tent were back on more familiar territory on day 3 of the festival, when the fish option was plain old Sea Bass.
But the Taoiseach - a fan of all kinds of Bass - was still mired in controversy over the previous day's dinner, following a report in The Sun that Orange Roughy is a threatened species in the southern hemisphere.
Luckily, Mr Ahern had no problem dealing with the issue. "It's not that much of an endangered species," he told members of the media as he watched the Galway Plate. "Everybody had it last night, and they're all in excellent form today."
Right enough, the form in the Fianna Fáil tent was generally good, although - regardless of which main course they ate on Tuesday - several species of Cabinet minister remained under obvious threat.
The lesser-spotted Minister for Finance has yet to be seen in Galway, and fears that he might have become extinct altogether were only allayed when Mr Ahern explained that Mr McCreevy had been detained at a "meeting" and was expected to arrive today.
By contrast, there were several sightings of the Minister for Defence, whom experts believe is now severely endangered by the drastic climate change that followed the June elections. Mr Smith said he was not thinking about the reshuffle.
But he sounded a philosophical, end-of-era note during media interviews, in which he described the Galway festival as a metaphor for the dynamic new Ireland his generation had helped create.
"I sometimes feel inadequate when I see the younger generation," he said. "They have much more self-confidence than we had. In my day, all you dreamed about was getting a good, permanent job."
Job insecurity has always been a problem in Government, as Albert Reynolds knows well. But the former taoiseach is attending his 45th Galway festival and, in the absence of the Minister for Finance, was advising financial prudence before the Galway Plate.
In fact, even as the horses went to post, he still hadn't decided on a bet in the ultra-competitive race, before thinking aloud: "I might back Ansar."
He didn't, as it happened, and it proved a costly mistake when the horse romped home to add to the Ballybrit legend of trainer Dermot Weld. Ansar's owner - Crossmaglen publican Mrs Kay Devlin - didn't back it either. But by her own account, she didn't need to.
In a free-wheeling media interview, Mrs Devlin said that Ansar and the other nine horses she owns were gifts from her sons, who were "oil sheikhs". She amended this slightly to "in the oil business". But no, she added, none of the horses were kept in Crossmaglen: "We wouldn't want them kidnapped!"
Asked if there would be free drink for customers in Devlin's pub, she quipped: "There certainly will! And they can smoke there as well." Finally, to cap an eventful interview, Mrs Devlin agreed that Ansar's victory was a good omen for her county's chances in the All-Ireland (the same horse won the Galway Hurdle in 2002, foreshadowing Armagh's breakthrough): "But I'm backing Tyrone, because that's where my father came from."
The Hurdle is the feature race today, although for many festival-goers, the main event will be the Best-Dressed Ladies competition. The title is expected to be fiercely contested, as usual.
Probably the only certainty is that Dermot Weld can't win, although you still won't get long odds against him from the bookies.