As a nation, the Irish tend to be fiercely Francophile, taking the ferry from Rosslare to Le Havre for their annual holidays each summer and dreaming of little guesthouses and glasses of Pastis all winter. The attractions are certainly plentiful - there's the culture, the fields of sunflowers, and the sun-baked beaches of the Mediterranean - but most of all, there's the food. We're a greedy lot, and a trip to France, to indulge in fresh baguettes, plates of steak frites, jewel-like patisseries and cheap bottles of rich red wine, is like a package tour to Eden.
Until recently, trying to regain Paradise has involved loading up the boot of the car with jars of Bonne Maman jam and rounds of brie in the local Carrefour supermarket and then trying, and failing, to eke them out all winter. Cookbook writers since the days of Robert Carrier have attempted to teach us how to cook like the French, but without the right raw ingredients and, perhaps the right touch of arrogance, most attempts at being a culinary copycat were destined to failure.
However, a growing number of people have discovered the key to eating like the French in the comfort of their own homes and it's called La Maison des Gourmets on Castle Market in Dublin. Stepping into the tiny shop is like arriving at a French epicerie/boulangerie/patisserie all rolled into one. In the window, there are trays of divine and delicate pastries; to the left are shelves piled high with Poilane bread and to the right is a chilled cabinet offering robust terrines of rabbit and quail. Venture further into the tiny shop and you can pick up an entire meal cooked in the kitchens below the shop and vacuum packed, ready to eat.
Here is where you can score a rich comfit of duck, a serving of gratin dauphinoise or a pool of monkfish with saffron, to eat at your leisure. If you want to cook dinner yourself, you could always go for a boned pigeon, stuffed with cabbage and foie gras; a rabbit that has been reared on the finest of French grass, or rustle up something from the piles of cheeses, saucissons, truffles or foie gras from the south of France.
This home for gourmets is the brainchild of two Frenchmen, Olivier Quenet and Nicolas Boutin, who opened their doors last summer. Neither of them are new to Ireland, having arrived here some four years ago and put in time at restaurants such as Patrick Guilbaud, The Commons and Les Freres Jacques (Quenet) and Les Freres Jacques (Boutin). "We both love food and love to cook at home," explains Quenet, "but it was just too difficult to get good produce such as foie gras or truffles, that you can find so easily in France".
He is quick to point out that it is not a large operation - "just a small piece of pastry, a small piece of pate and so on" - and that it's fluid in its composition: "Because we have no set menu, we can say `if I want to do this, puis, I can do it'." All the goods in the shop are sourced by the pair from small producers in France, with some, like the Poilane bread, being flown in from Paris each morning.
"We want to sell only the highest quality. We know we have to make money but we believe that if we give quality to the customer, they will come back." Such quality doesn't come cheap and some of the prices for the mouthwatering delicacies are enough to make your eyes water too.
Yet this hasn't put the customers off and at any hour of the day or night, but particularly on a Saturday, the shop is full to bursting point. Quenet reckons that some 40 per cent of his customers are French, "which is a good compliment", with one particular customer buying all his food from La Maison des Gourmets.
They put the success of their range of ready-to-eat meals down to the recent changes in Irish lifestyle. "People have lovely homes now, they want to eat well and they want to invite people round to eat. But not everyone wants to spend hours in the kitchen," points out Quenet. "With these meals you are getting the kind of food I cooked in Guilbaud's, but you just need to heat it up."
Their next project is opening up the high-ceilinged room upstairs from the shop as a small salon du the. "Every place in France has one, a few tables where you can enjoy a good coffee, a good tea and a pastry." The tea will be by Mariage Freres, the coffee by a Luxembourg firm called Knopes, and the pastries by La Maison des Gourmet's own pastry chef.
So have the pair seen an improvement in the traditionally staid Irish attitude to good food? "I remember when I was starting to cook here, I would make something with truffles and people would put them to one side of the plate. Now we order in fresh truffles and they are sold out within two weeks. But then, the customers we have are gourmands," laughes Quenet. Gourmets? "No, gourmands" he says firmly and approvingly.