Julia Roberts and Mary Robinson don't have a lot in common but they have both been to Johnnie Fox's, so should they ever be stuck together in that hypothetical lift they could at least discuss it. "What an amazing old place," Julia might say. "Those weird bedpans stuck to the lavatory doors!"
"Yes indeed, and perfect if you have visiting dignitaries with bad English to entertain," the former president might add. Mind you, judging by a photograph of her on the wall there, looking a little wild-eyed and pink-faced, she may have found the whole experience a bit trying. The Johnnie Fox experience starts when you walk through the front door and think Wow . . . Junkarama! Every inch of space drips with memorabilia - pictures, photographs, jugs and books, baskets, strange wooden tools, old hair tonic bottles and cigarette packs and clippings about John F. Kennedy. Perfect for your overseas visitors because by the time they have finished browsing in and out of all the nooks and crannies, the music has started up, which saves everyone a lot of pidgin English chitchat.
On the night we visited, a rainy Wednesday when most sensible people were home in front of the telly, the place was packed, and that included the hooley hall off the bar where, for £6, you get to sit around a room hung with horse brasses watching a Riverdance-style floor show.
I had tried to book a table that day, but was told that they were full up. "Come on up anyway," they said, since apparently a few tables are kept for people who drop by. Not the best tables obviously, as we were to find out. Off we set up the long winding road through Carrickmines to Glencullen - a pleasant journey in the dusk but a nightmare of bad bends after dark. Our ears were popping by the time we arrived, although a Kerry friend who was joining us for dinner, insists that it is not the "highest pub in Ireland" at all, since there is a place familiarly called the Top of Coomb on the Beara Peninsula that is higher still. At the door a lad with a walkie talkie and a sheet of paper waved us into the bar, where another lad went off to see if he could find us a table. Inside it was the picture of cosiness, with benches pulled up in front of roaring fires, sawdust on the floor and the mellow smell of pints and cigarette smoke - the kind of atmosphere that makes you rub your hands together and start talking in a country accent. "What'll you have, no, go way out of that, I'm getting this one," that sort of thing.
The place is humming with bar boys and waiters who rush around organising one into a corner. We were shown to a table in a vaulted cellar-like room where there were five or six tables for four, all with reserved signs on them. The adjoining room looked more comfortable with a big fire at one end and more space between the tables, but it was full so we took the table we were offered. It was a sturdy pine one with four mismatched chairs around it so that while my husband sat on a high carver I sank into a wicker affair that was several inches lower. We were a bit too jammed up against a fire door for my liking, and there was a distinct draught coming us that the room would fill up and get warmer and that I would, too, once I had a bit of food inside me. Cead Mile Failte is splashed all over the paper table mats and folded bits of card on the table invite you to buy Johnnie Fox T-shirts and the like. Paper napkins and a relish basket with oils and sauce sachets in it set a casual bistro tone, but then the menu arrives and it is a big leatherette affair that runs to several pages, all carrying a reminder that no service charge is included.
There is no set menu - so you can browse between the pages but basically it is fish, fish or more fish. Seafood starters are between £5 and £8 while the main courses begin around £10 and go up to about £27 for the biggest seafood platter. The odd quirky dish is thrown in - like the alligator (when available) and Beluga Caviar with blinis at £95.
We started with prawn cocktail, a bowl of mussels and exotic-sounding Deep-fried Prawns with Coconut. My friend knows his mussels, having "bearded" thousands of them for his own table and he found these ones a bit flabby and uninteresting and full of grit. Still, they came in a delicious liquor that cried out to have big bits of French bread dunked into it. The bread we got was sliced wholemeal, which looked shop-bought, not "home made by my mother-in-law' as owner Tony McMahon promised in the menu.
Prawn cocktail can be nasty with tiny curly things drowned in sauce on top of wet lettuce but this one was just right: plenty of peeled prawns, enough mild pink sauce, and crisp lettuce with slivers of onion. Yum. The Coconut King Prawns with a Plum Sauce sounded lush but turned out to be just a heap of titchy deep-fried prawns with no hint of coconut and a gloupy sweet sauce.
I got the best main course, a gorgeous tagliatelle with a creamy sauce full of whole chunks of smoked salmon. Our friend's Halibut with Macadamia Nuts looked for all the world like a chunk of Donegal Catch but was much better than that - a steaming parcel of firm fish with a very crisp coating. My husband's Hungry Fisherman's Platter came on an alarmingly large glass plate in the shape of a fish, with islands of chilled seafood on it. "Not terribly interesting," and certainly a bit too expensive at £17.
The words "market fresh vegetables" on a menu set my alarm bells ringing. It usually means that they are anything but, and so it was with our kidney-shaped dishes of bullet-hard cauliflower and disgustingly mushy carrot batons. There is no excuse for this.
To go with all the fish we had chosen a bottle of Sancerre, at £16, from the short wine list. It came barely chilled but an ice bucket fixed that and we polished it off pretty quickly. Then we ordered another, and regretted it since one of us was going to have to drive back down again. We went easy on it despite numerous attempts by the waitress to top us up. Pub habits die hard, and our waitress was intent on whisking as much as possible off our table, starting with our water glasses. Then the bread went, the paper table mats and finally the relish basket, just in case we were going to filch the mustard and mayonnaise.
Desserts were reasonably priced but pretty ordinary - we shared two - a sticky carrot cake and a fruit crumble, neither of which was homemade but both at least doused in real cream. The bill was slapped down on the table as we drank our coffee.
This is fine in a cheap and cheerful place where they need your table but not when you are paying nearly £40 a head. By now the piped fiddle music was being drowned out by the session in the adjoining bar, where we were obviously meant to go after our meal. We obliged, ordering a round of drinks at the bar. Beside us the toilet doors - with those bedpans attached - swung open and shut, wafting out the peculiar smell of cherry air freshener. We tried to get into the hooley hall, where a lot of laughing and thigh smacking was going on, but we couldn't get past the bouncer, even though it was almost over.
The bill for three, including two beers, wine and mineral water came to £115.45. All in all, it was a bit Irish.
Johnnie Fox's Pub, Glencullen, Co Dublin. Open seven days. Monday to Saturday noon-10.15p.m; Sunday 4 p.m.-10 p.m. (012955647)
