Eating Out:The food is attractively old-fashioned and tasty, the place as comforting as a beloved overcoat.
A lot of people seem to think restaurant critics demand a three-Michelin-star experience every time they eat out. Most of us live in the real world, however, and want to eat well but without the formality and uptightness of grand restaurants.
One of the first questions I ask when I'm trying to assess a restaurant is: what is this place trying to do? Unfortunately, the answer often comes out as: "Extract as much money from customers as possible while delivering factory-made food tarted-up as pictures on plates." Or, on occasion, simply: "God alone knows."
Examples of restaurants that have a clear idea of what they want to do and manage to pull it off include Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud and the Winding Stair, both very different and very successful.
Ironically, the worst restaurants are the most profitable. If a restaurateur is blessed with customers who don't know pigswill from Thai beef salad, and if he also sources everything as cheaply as possible from catering suppliers, his bank manager will be very happy. If, on the other hand, there's a desire to do really good, fresh food with an interesting wine list and very high standards across the operation, his profits will be modest.
Sometimes, when I've been particularly damning, people ask what I expected. Well, edible food would have been a start. One cafe in a public space that I found repellent in virtually every respect was defended with this question, the implication being that (a) it's good enough for the people who are dimwitted enough to eat there and that (b) sure, it's always busy. What about the potential to do something really good?
Meanwhile, back to restaurants. I had hoped to tell you about Browne's of Sandymount, but all I can say so far is that it gets very busy on a Saturday night. We turned up 10 minutes late to find that our table had been given away. I suppose we should have phoned.
And so it was that we ended up in an old favourite, the Trocadero, to which one repairs occasionally for hearty and refreshingly plain food rather late at night. I've commented elsewhere that the food at the Troc is kind of immaterial, in that most of the diners arrive in a state of mild to moderate intoxication, and the meal acts in a way similar to how activated charcoal works in A&E departments. This is unfair in certain respects. A lot of people go to the Troc for the pre-theatre menu, and the vast majority of them must be sober. And a lot of people eat there at normal times, not after 11pm.
Secondly, there's the matter of the food, which is attractively old-fashioned and tasty, with few nods to modern trends such as lemon grass or the organic movement. I suspect they use stock cubes. But the Troc, with its fin-de-siecle touch of Parisian brothel and signed photographs of the stars - many of them very distinguished, some utterly obscure - is as comforting as a much-loved old overcoat. Too many things in Dublin have changed for the worse, but the Troc remains much as it has always been.
Don't get carried away now. It's not L'Ecrivain or L'Gueuleton. Our deep-fried Brie with cranberry sauce was comfort food with the bonus of producing nostalgia for when I was a teenager and this kind of thing was decidedly cutting edge. And our artichoke risotto, which we ordered thinking we had detected a potential Achilles heel, was surprisingly good.
The Troc is the kind of place where I order duck knowing that I'll get it just the way I ask (pink, not raw in the middle) with crisp skin and, on the side, some simple veg. And so it proved. A monstrous fillet steak - not a cut I often eat, believing that trading flavour for tenderness is a bit of a mug's game - was pleasantly crusty and as good as many a T-bone.
With a bottle of Côtes du Rhône and one rather good espresso, the bill came to €105.
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Wine Choice
Nobody is going to choose the Trocadero for the wine list, but there's some pleasant drinking to be had, especially in the Guigal Côtes du Rhône (€27) in the exceptional 2003 vintage (of which very little must be left).
Pecan Stream Shiraz-Cabernet and Pecan Stream Chenin Blanc (€26/€6.50 per glass), made by the Waterford Estate in South Africa, are very pleasant, up-front, fruity wines.
There's a whole range of Oxford Landing wines, from Australia, for €22, and a blast from the past in Mâcon-Lugny Les Genièvres, at €30. Aotea, one of the better and lesser-known New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, is listed at €35. Delamotte is a decent house Champagne at €10 a glass.