People's stomachs come in different sizes and what is a blow-out lunch for some might be only a light snack for others. I was keenly aware of this when taking a beanpole-thin friend of mine to lunch at the Harbour Master in the Financial Services Centre. I was last there with some hearty blokes from the office who ordered steaks and fries all around and huge creamy desserts. This would not be at all to the taste of my slender friend, who is a great believer in regular fasts, brown bread as a main course, and boiled water sipped very gently at night. Still, he came along just for the novelty of visiting the IFSC, which people seem to think is an incredibly strange and inaccessible place to go for lunch.
My memory of the Harbour Master is of a huge, cavernous, exposed-brick sort of place crammed with guys in shirt sleeves roaring and shouting over pints. Like a throwback to London City in the 1980s when everyone wore striped shirts and ski tans.
It still looks like that, until you walk into the new extension - a long room stretching almost to infinity with windows running right along one side, and the sort of decor that you might expect in a Finnish airport terminal or a trendy bedsit circa 1965. Here are all the key retro details that we have been reading about in Elle Deco and Wallpaper - stained plywood panelled walls; long cylinder lampshades; chairs dressed in aubergine chenille - funky, functional, a bit short on colour, but reassuringly trendy.
The clever thing was to keep the original restaurant and bar as it is, so that the more old-fashioned customer can still sit in a bent-wood chair at a stout wooden table. Gone was the scaled-up Captain America's fodder that I remembered. Instead, the menu is full of fashionable food (lots of mash, parmesan shavings, lentils) with a few items that are a bit passe (polenta, seared salmon, lemon tart). Prices are pretty steep - there is no set lunch, and three courses will cost about £25 per head - but then again you can bet that very few of the diners, ourselves included, would be paying out of their own pockets.
We hadn't booked, but it was early in the week and we were shown to a nice window table half-way down the room with excellent views in either direction. The maitre d' was wearing a smart charcoal suit and a deep blue shirt, which made him hard to distinguish from many of the diners. This is a strictlysuits place, and deep blue obviously a safe but gutsy colour in shirts these days. The handful of women there were also wearing suits and those fiercely angular glasses that cost about £400.
The menu is sensibly divided into light and not-so-light meals, so a lot would depend on whether you had clinched the deal that morning or had yet to do the business later on in the day. Even so, some of the light meals were quite hearty, like Grilled Toulouse Sausage with Red Wine Onion Gravy and Mash, or Blue Cheese Salad Topped with Lardons and (for those who missed breakfast) a Poached Egg.
There are seven or eight starters ranging from soup to elaborate salads, but judging by the trays that were whizzing by us, one of the most popular items is Cajun Chicken Wings at £4.20. The meat and fish main courses start with that trendy staple - Baked Cod and Mediterranean Veg, and end with a classic Rib Eye Steak with Chips.
Naturally my friend opted for a light main course, but then couldn't help himself and ordered Terrine de Campagne as a starter, while I chose roasted Artichoke with Parma Ham and Parmesan. To drink - sparkling water for me, still for him. No-one was drinking, of course, although halfway through the meal we spotted a solitary half bottle being brought to a table down the back where the hopeless soaks obviously go.
There was a delay of about 10 minutes before the starters arrived, and the waitress apologised. We had hardly noticed but then maybe our time was worth rather less in money terms than that of people around us.
We were too busy rubbernecking. My friend, who is in fashion and used to finding fault with tiny details like zips and collars, pointed out that the light flexes had knots in them and the voile curtains had a nasty polyester feel. The clients came in for some criticism too, particularly a man at the next table who got up to leave and absent-mindedly hitched up his trousers over his stomach. "That's something one should never do in public," he said with a shudder. Still it didn't put him off his terrine - which turned out to be infinitely better than the chilled slab of fatty stuff that one often gets in the name of pate. It was a dense mousse of the innards of various animals that melted away in the mouth. It came with two tiny triangles of toast, but more was brought immediately when he asked.
My Roasted Artichokes and Parma Ham was livened up with dashes of balsamic vinegar and sprigs of thyme. It was gorgeous, and there was plenty of it, so I couldn't do full justice to my "heavy" main course - braised shank of lamb with lentils and mash. Not a very attractive dish to look at - the shank looked like a big cooked heart with a bone sticking out of it, and the mash was served in the shape - and almost the size - of a rugby ball. If you wanted to outsmart a business opponent, this is the dish to make them order while you toy delicately with a salad - a well-known German technique, according to an uncle of mine who works for IBM. Looks apart, this was a stunningly tasty dish, the meat deliciously tender, and wild mushrooms and bacon somewhere in the mix.
My friend's "light" seafood risotto was anything but. He got a bright yellow mound of sticky rice with tiny prawns, the odd crab claw and a chunks of flaky white fish. He nearly passed out when he realised how much garlic was hidden among the fish bits. Whole cooked cloves, masquerading as shellfish, were immediately airlifted to the ashtray. There were 10! I tasted one and it was beautifully mild and smokey with a delicate seafood taste. Amazingly, after all that starch, he had some room for dessert whereas I, in the presence of such slimness, had to pretend I couldn't eat another thing.
The creme brulee changes daily, according to the menu, but that day it was vanilla flavoured and absolutely perfect. It came in a wide, shallow dish with its crust fragile as ice over a puddle. He devoured it. I made do with a double espresso, while he ordered mint tea. There was no mint tea. This is a go-go-go, double-dose-of-caffeine sort of place, but they did find him a herbal tea that came in a swanky sachet telling him to let his spirits flow or some such new age nonsense. Instead we left, like everyone else, well before 3 p.m. I felt happy and full of delicious food. He complained that he had put on weight. With two rounds of mineral waters, coffee and tea, the bill came to £48.70 without service.
The Harbour Master, Irish Financial Services Centre, Dublin 1 (01-6701688)
