Two days before Patrick Guilbaud opened his new restaurant alongside the Merrion Hotel, it resembled a cross between Mostar, Kabul and Grozny. I cannot say for sure that there were small, dusky fellows with rocket launchers huddled behind the rubble, with platoons of grim-faced conscripts skulking in cellars, but it certainly looked as if there should have been.
Now everybody knows that nothing in this world is finished with days to spare, at which point the people involved in the now-completed project spend their time lying alongside swimming pools and examining their cuticles before the official opening. That is not human nature. Even the Americans finish major undertakings at the very last moment. For the Apollo flight to the moon, there were half-a-dozen plumbers still working on the piping just seconds before blast-off, and it is not certain that all of them got off on time. Lunar-exploration vehicles in their investigations of the moon have occasionally seen the odd, Ben Gunne-like figure hopping around craters, plumber-tools hanging from his waistband, with reports of pathetic scratching noises on the skins of vehicles, and malnourished and skeletal fingers tapping forlornly on the lens of the vehicle cameras.
Christmas shopping
Packing for holidays, returning library books, writing articles, getting jabs, seeing the dentist, getting the car serviced, mowing the lawn, painting the front door - these are things we could do in good time, but never do. There is no greater and more repetitive example of this than Christmas. Everybody in this world knows beyond doubt that now is the time to do the Christmas shopping; but we won't do it now, will we? Not now, while the shops are empty and the staff are at their ease, and there is time and space galore.
No. We will wait until shops resemble Stalingrad before we decide to go out and buy presents. The purchase of a box of chocolates then will be as expensive as a house-clearing by a section of infantry, concluding with hand grenades, a bayonet charge and many tears. The books which could have been bought painlessly in October will on Christmas Eve be acquired, along with shrapnel injuries, shellshock and the odd amputation or two.
It is the same old story in all human endeavour. Psychiatrists call it pathopunctultimitis, but normally it is known as Builder's Blight, by which no undertaking can be complete without the final hours being filled with the din of floors being hammered down like coffins in a plague and paint being applied as if it were anti-nuclear flash protection with two minutes to go before the bomb drops. Call it Builder's Blight if you like: or maybe from now on, we should call it Guilbaudery, to honour Gallic pathopunctultimitis at its most gallant.
There was no way on this world that the ruin which was Patrick's uncompleted restaurant two days before opening could be ready by next Christmas, never mind on the official opening day: yet he stood surrounded by heaps of brick and rubble as happy as if he were standing in the Musee d'Orsay eyeing a Renoir.
Immaculate French
"Sett ahmpossybeel," I said in my immaculate French, offering my opinion of the twoday deadline. Patrick blinked politely. I gestured in a helpfully French fashion at the bricks and unmixed mortar and the paint and the architect at death's door, threshing on the ground trying to loosen his tie. I spoke again. "Sett ahmpossybeel. Tu es facing ruin. Sett un disastre sahn pareye. Un complet et utter femme-cheval de nuit. Tu pauvre batard. Proshayn stop le court de bankruptsee, et appray sa, say Stubbs por twa, vyeu chum, et puis le clink. Forcible jiggy jig chaque nuit avec hommes violent qui never take no for an answer. Orreebl. Not your tasse de the. Nor mine neither. Oh yes. Rather toi que moi, mate."
Patrick blinked again, and continued about his way.
I was back two days later to scoff. It was a miracle. Out of Stalingrad had been conjured a French salon, with Guillaume Lebrun working his traditional magic back in the kitchen. Those of us fortunate to be there on that first night were not to know that behind the scenes virtually nothing was ready; the cookers and ovens had not even arrived, and a desperately under-equipped Guillaume was preparing food for about 80 people - apparently using a Primus stove, two candles, an electric kettle and a single fork for whisking, mashing, mixing, blending, fricaseeing, whipping and sauteing.
It was one the culinary miracles of the age; and no sooner had the restaurant opened for that first night than it closed again so that Patrick could haul in those useful little devices in kitchens - such as stoves, ovens, whisks, etc. - so that poor Guillaume would no longer be reduced to boiling potatoes over a candle.
It is now open again. I am an unashamed supporter of Patrick Guilbaud. His old restaurant set standards of excellence and consistency other restaurants very properly strive for; his two Michelin stars are unique because his restaurant is unique.
Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud is associated with the new Merrion Hotel; but it is not the hotel restaurant. It will not provide room service and will not be open on Mondays. It is a free standing and separate establishment, to which guests of the Merrion are of course as welcome as anybody else. And we can only welcome the combination. We need a first-class hotel with a first-class restaurant in Dublin.
A disappointment to me was a recent visit to the restaurant in the Shelbourne Hotel. A sumptuous-looking plate of seafood had all the flavour of used chewing-gum. We ordered pink to rare lamb; it arrived a muddy brown, and even though the waiter could see it was overcooked, still served it to us. The meal was so awful that the management next day contacted my host - a guest of the hotel - and cancelled the bill. We would rather have eaten well and paid. You will do that in Patrick Guilbaud's.