The sun had been shining all day but - in spite of the south of France feel - things were going wrong at the rate of knots. The car had crashed, a leaking shower had sent water dripping down onto a much-loved painting, the children got too much sun, the babysitter was late, the taxi was late and by the time we arrived at Eden in Temple Bar for dinner, the air was positively bristling with bad humour. We hadn't been there in ages, in fact since the first couple of months of its opening when we were never able to get a table downstairs, and found the narrow upstairs room claustrophobic and the food nothing to write home about.
But now it's summer and we wanted to eat outside. By some miracle I phoned in time to get the last outdoor table on the long terrace overlooking Meeting House Square. Just to be safe I had wrapped myself up in a frumpy old fleece. This was a big mistake. The dress code at Eden is totally cool and you don't need extra layers to sit outside.
Everyone was lolling about in shirt sleeves or floaty linens, since each table is warmed by one of those pillar style heaters with glowing red tops that are hot enough to curl your hair and cure psoriasis at the same time. It's amazing how relaxing it is when you don't have to hunch your shoulders and cross your arms to keep warm.
We sank down at the table, mollified by the smooth service, but still expecting things to go wrong at any moment. Instead we got pure theatre - well-dressed people all around, a whiff of cigar smoke from the next table, interesting foreign accents, and the intimate enclosed square gilded by the last rays of sun. It felt like the centre of a Tuscan town in high summer. Not only that but the square was full of chairs and a white screen was pulled down at one end so we were going to get a film as well. "Wings of Desire - starts at 10 o'clock," said the waiter distributing the menus and bread basket. We needed a drink badly and something sparkly was in order as our friend Peter was on the verge of a big deal, possibly the big deal. We ordered a bottle of New Zealand Pelorus - from the people who make Cloudy Bay - and it arrived perfectly chilled and held at arm's length by a very elegant waitress who poured from the base, holding her other hand behind her perfectly erect back. Showy service, but it made us feel as though we had ordered the finest vintage, so of course we were soon asking for another. It's not as outlandishly expensive as champagne but it ain't cheap either, at £35 a bottle - about twice what you can get it for in Superquinn. Still, it's a brilliant pick-me-up and soon we were quite pink in the face, admiring everything around us from the glass block butter plate to the good-looking couple two tables down and the waitress's white outfits, and vowing to get out of suburbia more often.
Peter, who sees auspicious signs in small things, spotted the outline of a dolphin on the cork and announced that this was going to be a special evening. We had to wait a while for his girlfriend Monica to arrive, but the waitress said that this was fine since the kitchen was very busy anyway. This might mean that service can be slow on a busy night but we saw no signs of it around us. Forty minutes later we got word that Monica was parking the car not too far away so we went ahead and ordered with her blessing. Peter was absolutely sure that she would love a starter of black pudding, followed by a dish of liver and kidneys but, as it turned out, she loved nothing of the sort.
It's a tricky business ordering for someone else, rather like playing that married couples game where, with a few simple questions you find out that you know absolutely nothing about your partner. We played it once at a dinner party and one couple came totally unstuck. Asked about the most unusual place they had made love, she said, "On a Caribbean beach" and he said "On the floor of your mother's ensuite bathroom."
At last Monica arrived and the food appeared without further ado, each plate landing in front of the person who had ordered, but without any silly flourishes or dome-lifting nonsense. I had warm asparagus and though there weren't a lot of them for £6.95, they were very good and not drowned in buttery sauce. Monica took one look at her triangles of black pudding and swapped them for Peter's plate of warm goat's cheese, while David quietly demolished a big plate of gravadlax all by himself.
After such a restrained starter I was looking forward to my risotto which came snowed under in parmesan flakes, but since it turned out that Monica didn't like liver and kidneys at all, we exchanged plates. The lamb's liver was rich and crumbly while the kidneys absolutely reeked of the farmyard.
Peter got the least interesting dish - a plain old corn-fed chicken breast covered in a fatty skin. Again, David quietly scored with a big tender lamb shank with delicious gravy and mash. By now the square had filled up and the film was about to begin. We sat back and stretched our legs out towards the heat. It's a pretty deep movie with lots of dreams and flashbacks and a woman constantly swinging to and fro on a trapeze, then Columbo comes into it, with his dirty old raincoat. I hadn't a clue what was going on but the black and white scenes of old Berlin and the music, and the wine made for such an atmosphere that we thought it was the best film we'd ever seen. We all had room for dessert and I was poring over the menu when an old school friend appeared at the table, on her way home. "Have the chocolate cake. It's amazing" she said, although it was quite obvious from her skinny waist that she hadn't touched chocolate since 1979. I had it and it was amazing - hot and oozing with dark chocolate sauce but a tiny slice so you don't feel like a complete horse eating it. Coffees came and went - a bit carelessly served with the cream gone off the espresso from sitting around, waiting to be served - and the film wound itself up to a happyish ending. Peter staggered off to the gents and was charmed by the communal layout of the cubicles.
Our bill for four, with two bottles of wine, plenty of Nash's mineral water and two rounds of coffees came to £129.10 without service. The Pelorus added an extra £70.
The open air movies will be showing every Saturday night from now until the beginning of September. There's something for everyone, including An American in Paris tonight, Manhattan on August 28th and LA Confidential on September 4th.
Eden, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 - phone 01-6705372. Open everyday, 12.30 p.m to 3 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
