Ross Morgans, Newbridge: There's a photo of me in the kitchen, as an early- warning system. It didn't work, writes Tom Doorley
Restaurant reviewing is generally pretty straightforward. You go along unannounced, eat, make notes, go home and write your piece. Occasionally, of course, things go awry. I had a call from a media student the other day. She was looking for an account of a day in the life of a restaurant critic. I explained that every day is different but promised to log what I did on my next outing. I had no idea quite how different it would be.
The log goes something like this: Rise, in my Dublin bolt-hole, at 7.45am and breakfast on tea and muesli with some fresh fruit. While eating I employ a water pistol to discourage pigeons from roosting on the balcony. After some time they move to the window ledge and stare at me menacingly while I type on my laptop.
More tea at 11am, followed by several phone calls. One confirms that I live too far from our telephone exchange to get broadband. It seems unlikely that this will change before the end of the century.
I then set off for Newbridge. While admiring the roadworks on the N7 I have time to calculate that I have just enough diesel to get me to Urlingford, where fuel prices are less extortionate than the average. I leave the motorway as soon as I see a sign for Newbridge, then spend 45 minutes getting through the town. A truck that decides to overtake defies the laws of physics by pulling into a space that appears not to exist. It is hot.
I overshoot the turning for Newbridge Silverware and spend 15 minutes getting back. By now it is 2.30pm, but my destination, Ross Morgans cafe in the Newbridge showrooms, is still busy. I join the queue and realise that (a) the self-service grub looks pretty good and (b) I just want to eat and get home.
Sweet-potato soup looks rather grey but smells good, so I grab a bowl. The fresh fish, delivered daily from Kilmore Quay, in Co Wexford, looks terrific. Despite the self-service nature of the joint, the John Dory in batter looks crisp and inviting. So I ask for it.
The person I place the order with nods and then vanishes. While I wait for her return, the three remaining portions of John Dory are served to people behind me in the queue. Eventually she returns and says the fish is all gone. I am getting a bit tetchy.
I have to settle for chunks of pork in a creamy sauce with bits of dried apricot. And a selection of salads that, like the pork, is okay but nothing very special. And I remind myself that cold pasta will always be cold pasta, even when dressed with some kind of pesto thingy. The sesame noodles don't taste as bad, but the big chunks of tomato and cucumber taste of very little.
My 187ml of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is not bad, and curiously good with the soup, which has lime and other oriental twists. Mind you, it had been chosen to accompany the fish.
Ross McCabe, the cafe's co-owner, arrives during my modest repast and points out that it was not the best time to come. He has a point. I had intended to be there an hour earlier. McCabe looks anxious and fretful but is charming. He confesses that there's a photograph of me on the wall in the kitchen - not for throwing stuff at, apparently, but as a kind of early-warning system.
It didn't work. I got the same as anyone else, which is exactly as it should be. But if it weren't for the photograph I reckon I might have got the fish. Which is kind of ironic.
When I am told there is no charge, I have to insist on paying the €28.60. You can't review a meal you get free.
After a coffee and a stroll around the town, marvelling once again at how people can live with the traffic, I head south and within a couple of hours am driving over the hills from Araglin to Ballyduff, meeting one car and one tractor, which is a lot by normal standards. Gridlock around here probably means the milk tanker is on its rounds.
At home I write up some notes, dig potatoes, water the celery bed, eat lamb cutlets and baby carrots, check e-mails and go to bed early. In the calm light of dawn I decide that Ross Morgans is probably very good.
• Ross Morgans, Newbridge Silverware, Newbridge, Co Kildare, 045-488439