HISTORY: Jammet's of Dublin: 1901 to 1967By Alison Maxwell and Shay Harpur The Lilliput Press, 264pp. €25

I FEEL I have lived with Jammet’s all my life. My father proposed to my mother in what was referred to as the back bar, and over the years he would occasionally try to describe what made it so wonderful. But it wasn’t easy: was it the food, the people, the room (in this case, in fact, rooms) or the atmosphere?

The truth is it was all these things and more. Restaurants are good, for a time, because so many little things are in balance. It’s what makes them so elusive and rare.

The story itself is intriguing. Two brothers wend their way from France to Ireland separately, eventually joining up and opening a French dining room. This morphs into bigger premises, which are not ideal because it’s all a bit of a jumble, but on Nassau Street a Dublin institution is realised in its second guise. The business is passed from father to son, times change and things fizzle out. It is sold and that is the end.

Here you have the story, told in tandem with the inevitable historical context and endless names: of the great and the good, the rich and the famous, the artistic and the creative – among them John Lennon, who scribbled the restaurant a note, with a sketch: “The other three are saving up to come here!”

But being famous is not by itself particularly interesting, even if you have dined somewhere like Jammet’s. None of them really comes alive; there isn’t time. It is a list that sadly fails to illuminate the magic of the place, for this reader at least.

The book is really a collection of essays. Part one tells the story; part two has the restaurant’s sommelier Shay Harpur and his wife, Jackie, reminisce; part three is a focus on a few of the staff; part four has more reminiscing, this time from customers; and part five has something on the food and menus. But I struggled to really find the essence of a place I would love to have visited.

Does this make it a bad book? Not at all. It is a good record of a Dublin institution that lives on. (The name and rights are owned by Oliver Hughes of the Porterhouse, who also owns the original site on Nassau Street – now Lillie’s Bordello – and one day intends to use them.)

Perhaps one day we will get to enjoy minute steak Béarnaise, sole Jammet, souffle Rothschild and petite marmite Henri IV, but I rather hope not. French haute cuisine had its day, as did Jammet’s. It was something of a golden age, at least from the standpoint of this book (bear in mind two world wars, the Easter Rising and independence).

History flowed through the doors and helped to create something special at the hands of two French brothers and a lot of hard-working and loyal staff.

The magic is in the room itself, and I wanted more about the other side of the baize door, some of which came in the jolly reminiscences, but not enough. We love restaurants, but they are hard, harsh environments that require a real dedication from so many, all for the glory of the lucky few who sit and benefit. Is there a magic? Certainly, but it is elusive and hard to document.

If or when Jammet’s rises again it will need to be completely different. Restaurants don’t repeat themselves. They cannot. That is what makes them so intriguing.

Hugo Arnold’s latest book is The Giraffe Family Cookbook