Once upon a time airports were destinations in their own right, a place to dine and even dance, as this Irishman's Diary discovered. –
JOE JOYCE
IN THE leisurely years of the first third of this restless century, it used to be fashionable for the young, the prosperous, and the gay to head, of an autumn evening, towards the sea.
Arrived at their chosen venue, they would make their way to the extreme tip of that Anglo-Saxon concession to fantasy, the resort pier, and there they would find a Grand Pavilion de Danse, where they would trip it merrily in the midst of health-giving ozone, into the small hours. Ireland never introduced pierhead dancing at least, not formally. Last week, however, I discovered that we have something as good in the dinner dances at Dublin Airport.
The airport restaurant takes up the first floor of one wing of the ship-like terminal building. It is just far enough out of Dublin to have a certain aloofness and to give the diners a feeling of a mildly adventurous occasion. It is also extremely well designed for quiet festivities; a long, narrow curving room, with a circle of dance floor at one end to my mind, a much better position for a dance floor than the middle of the diners and a discreetly excellent band.
Through the evening, as the customers dine and dance, they have the added stimulation of watching intrepid explorers boarding the great silver birds that will bear them booming through the night to the fabled fastnesses of Liverpool, Manchester, and far-off Birmingham. I defy anyone to watch a night flight take off without re-experiencing something of the thrill that a small boy gets in a railway station, even if it’s only going to Speke.
John Opperman, who is in charge of catering at the airport, and whose brainchild the dinner dances are offers quite remarkable value at an amazingly low cost. The food is excellent, so is the service; and the wine list, as extensive as the most captious bibber could demand, has some of the most reasonably priced wines in Ireland.
On the night of my visit he introduced me to a Mouton Rothschild, 1922, warning me that, in theory at least, this wine should be too long in the tooth (or cork) for tolerable drinking. I accepted the Opperman recommendation in the teeth of the senility of the wine, and was rewarded by a most palatable and delectable drink, whose only evidence of age was shown in a slight thinness.
I approached the bottle conscious of an innate Philistinism about the wine cult. While there is no drink that I appreciate more, I am at one with Donal O’Kelly, a real connoisseur, in deploring those arty-crafty vestals who build a great edifice of mumbo-jumbo, of tabu, around their table-drinking.
As for those posturing peacocks who write and talk about “Coy, delicate little Clarets, with a shy Gallic gaiety stealing through,” and so on, I would cheerfully drown the lot of them in a butt of cooking sherry.
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