Dashing to the match

Oh dear! Tonight was one of my chew & chat nights with my friend Tom. We take it in turns to nominate a restaurant to go to, and tonight Tom booked One Pico (what a desperately bad web site!), in Schoolhouse Lane, off Molesworth Street. I'd had a busy day leading up to the evening, and was  feeling far from the mood of wanting to go in to town and socialise over a meal. But a commitment is a commitment, and I duly closed the door behind me at 7.30-ish, walked to the DART at Clontarf Road, waited patiently for 11 minutes for the DART to arrive and wended my way to Tara Street station. It was as I walked down the Malahide Road towards Fairview that I was almost blinded by the floodlights which were turned on full-blast on a Gaelic Football pitch close to home. Where do they get the money? From the Lotto, probably. The display certainly said nothing about energy conservation, but it made an okay blip.

We met in Davy Byrne's, had a couple of beers there, and Tom went on to make sure our table (reserved for 9.00) was still there for us. When I joined him he was standing at the on-the-way-in bar, having ordered a couple of Kirs. It was 9.45 before we were called to our table, all the time without any apology for the fact that it wasn't ready when we arrived. Service was bad, inefficient and unprofessional. My Ham Hock Terrine starter fell apart the moment I touched it, my Hake main course was adequate at best (a nice bit of fish, but served with ridiculously pretentious accompaniments), and the only saving grace in terms of my food was my Crème Brûlée dessert. Adding on the Kirs we'd had while we were waiting, another Kir as a sit-down aperitif, vegetables with the main course, a bottle of wine and a coffee each, the bill came to a horrendous hundred euro each. At a pinch it might have been worth two-thirds of that. As it happened, I left totally determined that I'd never set foot in the place again.

We went on to what used to be Eddie Irvine's pub, ran out of it after one drink, and ended the night in the utterly wonderful Japanese late-night bar on Exchequer Street whose name we can never remember. Lesson learned: avoid One Pico at all costs! We parted company shortly after 2.00 am and I got the 2.30 Nitelink bus home.