Superhero steaks

OK, hands up all those who had their first date at Captain America's? So, that might have been 20 years ago, but can you remember what a cool place it was, with the loud music, the waitresses in incredibly tight jeans, the fact that you had to stand three deep at the bar before getting a table? Going down that long, narrow corridor to get there made it seem like a nightclub and it stayed open so late it might as well have been one.

At school, we loved Captain America's. We didn't have boyfriends but God we wanted them. In the meantime, a big chocolate dessert would do, and, after a Saturday afternoon shop for cheesecloth tops and love-beads, three or four of us would nip into Captain A's to share a single Mud Pie or have a Coke float. You were made if you got a job there. People were putting themselves through college on the tips alone but there was a waiting-list a mile long.

I settled for a job at Thunderbirds down the road - a slightly less funky but equally loud place where one chef kept a soda siphon by his side so that if, say, a pizza fell on the ground, he could just give it a quick blast of soda to clean it off and put it back on the plate. Yum.

Most of the customers there were obnoxious people who, as soon as you arrived with a burger in either hand and couple further up your arm, would ask for the relish tray as though you should have been carrying it on your head.

It was great to go back to Captain America's, though we only went there by default, the designated restaurant of the week having closed for one night for family reasons. It was a relief really. Sometimes you just can't stand the sight of another perfectly arranged plate of salad leaves, or another lovingly stirred risotto. Sometimes you just want a burger. Not even the best burger in town, just a burger.

Through the tunnel entrance we went and up the stairs. I was trying to remember the shops in that long narrow arcade that used to be next door, where Champion Sports is now. There was Mariga jewellery at the door and The Diceman upstairs, and a place downstairs that sold those wash-handbasins in the shape of a woman's bottom, but that's as far as we got.

We got in just in time, ahead of a stream of girls, and inside it seemed hopelessly full.

You still have to spend the obligatory 15 minutes at the bar, where we were jostled with teenagers looking for pitchers of cocktails and tall-neck beers. There was a huge, half-term crowd of kids, mostly girls in skinny T-shirts and clumpy runners, most of them thin as wafers but with the obligatory plump friend squeezed in between. The walls are an excitable red and the atmosphere was thick with hormones.

After not too long a wait, we got a table in the front, near the big windows that look over Grafton Street. What a view. Across the aisle from me were two teenagers who kissed and kissed in between sucks on their straws. She looked like Kate Moss with a perm and he looked dazed at his good luck. David's view was of a group of four girls, all poured into incredibly tight clothes and altogether mesmerising. I tried to concentrate on the stuff on the walls - old concert posters and guitars - and on a woman in the corner who had such long, stringy hair and such a deathly complexion it really looked as though she had been sitting there since the place opened in 1971.

The service is great. Order a drink and it's there at your elbow in a couple of minutes. Drink it almost to the end and it's whipped away again. Food comes almost as quickly and they check on you regularly to see if you're still chewing.

You don't often see lobster on a menu for £3.95 so I felt compelled to have it. David stuck to a classic - potato skins filled with bacon and cheese. Before you could say "is that Phil Lynott in that picture?" the first courses were in front of us. Well, it probably was lobster and I don't eat it so often that I would know if it wasn't lobster inside the deep-fried crumb crust, but the little fried balls looked just like scampi to me and tasted just like it too. They were nice and crunchy with shrimplike insides and anyway, after they are dunked in a good tartar sauce, who cares?

The potato skins were heaped up high and nicely browned on top but the processed ham and cheese were glued together in a big, bland mess and needed their garlic dip to liven them up. I had looked longingly at the burgers on the menu and could see all the old favourites - creamy mushroom sauce, chilli sauce, bacon and cheese, even the ghastly fried-egg burger. Instead I went for a house special - a chicken and cheese enchilada with salad instead of chips or baked potato - while David said he'd give the steak a go.

"I've got a lot more hair than some people here," he said, looking around the room - and sure enough, when you really looked into all the corners and booths there were plenty of folks pushing 40, most of them with their children, and a few of them on their own having burgers and half bottles of wine.

We were just under a big mural by Jim Fitzpatrick (where is he now and does he still paint women with toe-length hair all over motorbike petrol tanks?) but the walls are filled with all sorts of showbiz trivia such as Roddy Doyle's favourite football team jersey, framed below a Riverdance Tshirt and programme. Here's Bob Dylan, there's Aslan, and over yonder is Hugh Grant. The enchilada wasn't great. The filling was lukewarm but still it was shrivelled and burnt a bit on the outside. The chicken oozed out in chunks and there was damn all cheese. The salad was very good, though. It had loads of red onions and a strong dressing. Obviously we were not going to be kissing passionately between courses.

David's steak was a big, chunky one and it came with a fat baked potato and a rather nasty pepper sauce that luckily was separate.

I scanned the dessert menu looking for the Mud Pie, but it had been replaced by something called a Mud Slide. You can have every possible combination of ice-cream, chocolate sauce, biscuit, toffee etc, as well as cheesecake, banoffi and apple tart. We choose a chocolate toffee tart with ice cream and got a solid wedge of pie with a filling that stuck to the teeth. Both of us had just had fillings, so the ice cream was torture.

As we were leaving there was another queue of girls trying to get in the door. Whatever Captain America's do there, they must be doing it right.

With a couple of pints, one glass of wine, mineral water and a good espresso, the bill came to about £38. There's no service charge but you're expected to tip.

Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie