Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland.
There are still a few restaurants around the country that haven't bothered with anything so tasteless as modernity. Places where the decor is far more confused than the menu. Where the waiting staff consists largely of the proprietor's grumpy teenage offspring. Where food comes swimming in sauce, and frozen peas are still a proud feature of the vegetable plate. Spots where the prawn cocktail - an ancient dish sometimes presumed extinct - survives in isolated pockets. But these venues are fading away quicker than their floral paisley wallpaper. The Irish restaurant is no longer a place in which egg mayonnaise is the sophisticated starter option. Where the plastic tablecloth is potted with cigarette burns and smokers gorge on a fag between courses. It is no longer an establishment that can correctly boast of an extensive wine list if it is composed of Mateus Rosé, Black Tower and giant bottles of Pedrotti.
Instead it is a cool place where a request for tap water is greeted with a curious look, as if you had asked to sip from the toilet. Where the staff dress in black, so they look more like ninjas than someone who'll take your order. And where they stand over you as you sign your bill, pretending to examine your signature but actually checking to see if you've added a decent tip. Because the cost of an average meal is already so high, the 12.5 per cent service charge lumped on at the end makes you feel as if you're paying a kind of culinary stamp duty.
As it has evolved, so the modern Irish restaurant has developed its own cliches. There has arisen some belief, for instance, that "Asian fusion" is the catch-all solution to our gastronomic needs, that, during the centuries when the Irish were struggling by on pork and spuds, what they really yearned for was a sweet chilli dipping sauce to dunk them in. So where the standard choice was once between scampi, lasagne and a choicely-burnt steak, now no menu is complete without offering Thai fish cakes and some kind of Asian duck dish. Meanwhile, all chickens must be described as "corn-fed". You wonder what they fed them before. Scampi, perhaps.
In too many places the desserts are no longer lovingly made in the kitchen of the restaurateur; instead, they arrive fresh from a factory line in an industrial estate in Artane. And as the food enters your mouth the restaurant insists on filling your ears with coffee-table dance music. Although you won't have to listen to it for too long, because they need the table back at 9pm, so are serving you dessert before you've even had a chance to wipe the main course from your chin. You could gripe about it, but the chef's staring at you from the open kitchen that new restaurants now insist on having. And as the only one not getting a cut of the €20 tip you didn't want to leave anyway, he's not in the mood for complaints.