A few years ago, I would have wagered good money that the friendly, sweet, flavours of Thai cooking were all set to sweep through the country, steadily replacing the bland, compromised, Chinese food which most restaurants and take-aways offer.
But it simply didn't happen - not because people don't like the flavours of Thai food, but because the few Thai restaurants we do have seem inevitably to allow their cooking to become progressively more and more bland. This culminated for me in a meal in a Thai restaurant in Dublin some months back which amounted to a mish-mash of Eastern cuisines, and a dinner which had surrendered distinctiveness to a ghastly hodgepodge of stodge.
So, let's be thankful then for the accuracy and deliciousness of the cooking of Boonma Nilrat in the Thai House, in the village of Dalkey, south of Dublin. The venue has seen several restaurant incarnations in recent years - it was most recently an Indian restaurant, before that a French-style bistro - but I suspect the Thai House has a lengthy tenure ahead of it. The room is much the same as before, with a small bar and a few tables downstairs where you walk in off Railway Road, before you head upstairs to eat, but the presence of a fine Buddha, imported from Thailand, signals the fundamental changes which have taken place.
Boonma cooks and her husband, Tony Ecock, takes care of front of house. (Ecock is well known in food and wine circles as one of the Ecock brothers who run the chain of Vintage off-licences in Dublin and who distribute wine throughout the country.) They deliberated for months before deciding to take the plunge and open the Thai House late last year.
The food is every bit as enjoyable as Thai food should be - I often think the fundamental Thai belief that life should be sanak or fun instills itself into the way in which Thais cook.
This is food which is very easy to enjoy, very easy to hanker after. The menu divides into starters, a pair of soups, seven red, yellow and green curries, pan-fried dishes, five vegetarian dishes, grilled dishes, two salad dishes, noodles and fish dishes. My guests, who had already visited the Thai House, again ordered the Thai House Starter Pack, an amusing name for the selection of starters which comprises deep-fried prawns with Thai sauce, deep-fried pork ribs, deep-fried corn with curry paste, chicken satay with a sweet sauce, fried spring rolls, and Thai prawn toasts. This sounds like a lot of deep-frying among the selection but the lightness and individuality of the flavours of each little starter were excellently rendered. It was also a lesson that the flavours of Thai food can be ruddy and powerful.
My own deep-fried pork ribs with garlic, peppers and Thai sauces was a powerful concoction, the flavours deep and delicious. Indeed, this ability to deliver very powerful flavours is the hallmark of Boonma Nilrat's style, perhaps best seen in my main course, which was a whole yellow croaker fried with red curry and long beans.
"Spicy", the menu warns - but spicy is not in it. This is a rip-roaring adventure of a dish, a mighty whole fish coated with red curry through which you dig to plunder the rich, white flesh. Croakers inhabit tropical and warm temperate waters worldwide. "Most are edible but not especially good. A few croakers are excellent fare," writes the great fish authority, Alan Davidson. This yellow croaker was one of the excellent ones, the flesh succulent and dense and able to withstand the heat of the curry. (The fish takes its name, incidentally, from the fact that croakers croak like frogs, making the noise both when in the water and when they are being fished out of it. Having croaked its last, this fish could scarcely have wished for a finer ending.)
But not all the flavours in the Thai House are wham-bam. My guests' main courses of crab fried in oil with spring onions, garlic and sugar and Thai sauce, and chicken fried with ginger, mushrooms and garlic were both relaxed, subtle concoctions, the flavours expansive and very satisfying, pairing well with the fried rice they ordered.
We had stayed away from the ubiquitous Thai ingredient of coconut and coconut milk, but our desserts made up for that. Banana balls fried in coconut with honey were super sweet, a Thai coconut custard was quite deliciously fresh and banana boiled in coconut milk was, again, narcotically sweet. Some sticky rice with mango was a light, limber antidote to the overdose of sweetness.
From the wine list, we had the chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon from the Chilean firm of Cousino Macul, whose muscular forwardness matched the liveliness of the flavours. For those who need to be inaugurated into Thai food, the restaurant offers a wide choice of set menus and Mr Ecock is very helpful in explaining all of the complexities of the food. Starters and soups cost around £4, curries and most other main courses around a tenner, with desserts between £4 and £5.
Thai House, 21 Railway Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin. Tel: 01 2847304. Open 6 p.m.-midnight Tues-Sun. Major cards.