HAPPY, shiny people, laughing and having just that sort of officially splendid Sunday evening you like to daydream about on a wet Wednesday afternoon. Where else could we be but The Wineport, in the nifty little village of Glasson, a few miles from Athlone? Eight o'clock in the evening and the place is humming.
The Wineport is not especially well known beyond the county of Westmeath but, within its locality, Ray Byrne and Jane English's restaurant is something of a phenomenon.
Just take this late Sunday evening crowd, for example. Over at the window, enjoying those drop dead views across the inner waters of Lough Ree, is a Confirmation party of 19 people, young, old and in betweenies. A big Confirmation party in a good restaurant on a Sunday evening? Yes indeed and, what's more, these happy, shiny folk are enjoying a good dinner which has vegetables which are al dente.
Crisp carrots, lovely, crunchy celery. Simple, spot on, perfectly cooked.
Al dente vegetables at a Confirmation! What is the country coming to! But, there's more. In the central row of tables there is a bashful party of stylish, young women having a 21st birthday celebration, sipping purposefully at white wine, relishing the food. And not a hotel disco in sight. What is the country coming to?
Well, whatever the country at large is coming to, in Westmeath they have certainly come to their senses. Confirmation parties and 2lsts belong, in the Irish vernacular, in hotels. They belong in ghastly dining rooms, where brusque women wheel out tortured, well dodgy food and vegetables which, it seems, have been cooked for about 10 days.
Twenty first parties, meanwhile, belong in the hotel disco, where gallons of well dodgy drinks are soaked up by mortified, deep fried, cocktail sausages and vol au vents which would frighten the horses. But, clearly, not in Westmeath.
I had a real sense of the dynamic power for change which a good restaurant can achieve, when I walked into The Wineport. A simple, square room in wood, with big windows from which we can spy out across the glinting waters, it is a terrific space. Perfectly lit by snaky, fin de siecle lamps and candles, with a fire blazing in front of comfy couches, it is a statement of simplicity. There is a bar and a smattering of tables and waitresses who know their job perfectly.
I was there on a Sunday evening, just after eight. The restaurant had been packed all day, as the noonday eaters ceded to the late lunchers who ceded to the golfers and the trios of tourists and locals who had driven out from Athlone. On Sundays, the business does not stop.
This, of course, would inspire others to stick up that most fearful sign which declares. "Food Served All Day." But the food in The Wineport is real food simple, well conceived, with good, true tastes, the sort of dishes that sing loud and long to a good appetite.
They offer two menus an a la carte and a healthy options, bistro menu. The latter has dishes such as three bean soup with coriander, baked scallops in filo, fillets of trout with tarragon, fusilli with Mediterranean vegetables, mixed nuts and goats cheese.
The former offers dishes such as spicy chicken wings with a rhubarb and yogurt dip, local smoked salmon and eel, rack of lamb with tomato and oregano sauce, chicken stuffed with a leek mousse, Westmeath beef with a brandy and GIasson mushroom sauce.
I chose the spicy chicken wings and a clever main course of medallions of pork, interleaved on a skewer with prawns, which had a fine peanut satay. Both were excellent and the al dente vegetables and a moreish, cheesy, potato crumble amounted to the sort of food that comforts and enlivens. A dessert of brown bread ice cream in a crispy basket was, in comparison, less well achieved.
But the dynamic change which The Wineport represents is not a culinary progression, although the food is part of their success precisely because it is so appealing to so many. Their progression is a social one and lies with their ability to make a restaurant some place truly democratic appealing to young, old and in-betweenies, appealing to golfers and boaty types, appealing to couples escaping the babies for a few hours and footloose and fancy free twentysomethings.
AND, having attracted these disparate sorts out here to the water, The Wineport delivers a good time. Their collusion of effects the lighting, the friendliness, the keenly priced wines, the tasty food is irresistible.
In short, they have taken out those elements in a restaurant which could be considered alienating or disappointing frosty service, garish lighting, couldn't care less cooking and made, instead, a space where the restaurant serves as the focus for a good time, with the food a vital element in this equation, a place where everyone seemed happy. In an efficient, unselfconscious way, they are changing the way in which people use restaurants, changing the way in which people regard restaurants.
The Wineport sits hard on the waters of Lough Ree and it is a good ship, manned by a good crew.