Tom Doorleyreviews Eatzen, Co Meath
There are certain aspects of certain restaurants - danger signs, I suppose - that make the heart sink like a stone. The smell of air freshener, for example, is inextricably linked in my mind with lousy food. Muzak has never, in my experience, accompanied a good meal, just as a woeful wine list presages disappointment on the plate.
Then there are the silly names. A reader recently came across "the Salmon of Knowledge, as cooked by Finn McCumhal" on a menu in Dublin. This surely eclipses the more common "symphony of the sea" or (aargh!) "death by chocolate".
Eatzen, a kind of pan-Asian restaurant in Ashbourne, Co Meath, has expensive decor and affluent customers, and it specialises in silly names. "Phoenix Among the Stars" is what it calls wonton soup, and spare ribs are listed as "Miss Piggy in Aromatherapy". If this were April, you might assume that I was making it up.
The most unbelievable aspect of Eatzen, however, was not the names or even the cooking (most of which failed to match the stiff prices) but the time it took for us to get fed. Starters didn't appear for 20 minutes. Some 45 minutes after they had been cleared away I lost patience and told the staff that we were going if the main courses did not appear double quick.
None of what we ate was worth the wait. The, er, Fragrant Princess was good: rolls of deep-fried breaded squid with the usual salt and chilli. Wonton soup (sorry, Phoenix Among the Stars) was pleasant, with good stock. Miss Piggy was a generous helping of bog-standard spare ribs. The Fiery Dragon was a rather bland but far from pleasant orange-coloured soup containing a few king prawns and some mushrooms.
The starters were the highlight of the evening. And I've had much better for a fraction of the cost on Parnell Street in Dublin. Among the main courses (and I will spare you any further silly names) the least attractive was chicken with Mongolian sauce. I had no idea the Mongols were so good at re-creating the taste of tinned tomato soup.
Duck breast with a kind of chilli jam into which some orange juice seemed to have been mixed (flagged as Not Your Normal Quacky Dish; sorry, but I had to share that one) was a mixed blessing. The duck had been cooked slowly and was probably pretty good before it was slathered in what I came to think of as spicy Fanta sauce. Fillet beef was covered in Peking sauce, which in this establishment seems to be mixture of sugar and vinegar. At any rate, it was brown. Apart from the asparagus spears, which were tough.
Then there was something that claimed, in a roundabout way, to be spicy chicken. The chicken had that slippery, wet texture that I've encountered so many times I just don't order it in most Chinese restaurants. It was bathed in some sort of sweet-and-sour sauce flecked with decommissioned chilli flakes. It was blandly unpleasant. A Sichuan beef dish was as Sichuanese as I am and succeeded merely in being brown, bland and sweetish.
After being assured that Eatzen did only jasmine tea, we actually got oolong, which was a pleasant surprise but suggested that communication is not Eatzen's strong suit, at least on the Wednesday night that we ate there.
This was a meal that fell somewhere between poor and indifferent. Or poor and bad, if you take the price into consideration. Having to wait what seemed like an eternity for it ruined the outing. It was €156.90 wasted (this figure included tea and one bottle of mineral water).
Within the following couple of days we ate superbly at the China Sichuan in Kilmacud, Co Dublin, and at the Winding Stair, in central Dublin. So, by now, Eatzen seems like a bad dream. But at least the Fragrant Princess didn't involve air freshener.
• Eatzen, Ashbourne, Co Meath, 01-8352110, www.eatzen.ie
Wine Choice
The wine list is a little unexpected in places, such as when it offers Berry Bros & Rudd's Rioja (€23) and Château Lynch-Bages 1996 at, odd as it may seem, quite a reasonable €150.
House wines are unusual and include both the Petit Verdot and the Verdelho from Windowrie in Cowra, New South Wales, at €22.
Vinas Emiliana Chardonnay (€22) is from one of Chile's more interesting producers. Stella Bella Shiraz (€35) is the second wine of the cult Western Australian winery that makes Suckfizzle.
And, speaking of cults, the grossly hyped Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc is offered at €55, if you're so inclined. Veuve Clicquot NV Champagne is €75.