TEMPLE Bar is, as we all know, a thrilling experiment in living, and in eating. But sometimes when you hear how the area's restaurateurs are experimenting with the idea of cooking and with running a restaurant, you wonder if they should be left alone in the laboratory.
Take the restaurant which took a booking for a table from Bill Hughes, television producer and one of the judges in this year's Beck's Taste of Temple Bar Awards. Wednesday night, righto, they said. Mr Hughes turned up at the appointed time, and the restaurant was closed. Oh, we don't open on Wednesdays, they told him. But you took a booking, he said. Oh, they said. Well, sorry, but we're closed.
Well, it is different. Experimental, I guess.
Or what about the place Petra Carter, food writer and judge, visited one night with her son. Most of the dishes on the menu were not available, said the waitress, because the kitchen had run out of food. The restaurant offered two types of wine: red and white. As Ms Carter and her son gamely and professionally tried to make their way through what they could order from the menu, they witnessed every other customer in the restaurant leave after refusing to pay the bill. When Ms Carter insisted on paying, the waitress almost fainted with shock.
And there was the restaurant where Gerry Harpur, farmer and judge, looked forward to ordering a pizza at the end of a hard week. Sorry, said the waitress, we don't do pizzas on the weekend. Why not? inquired Gerry. Because if we did, then we would have to make too many, she replied. With a straight face.
Carolyn Compelli came across cajun chicken which involved chicken, tinned tomatoes, paprika, and nothing else. Helen McKenna could only, at the end of her sojourn judging restaurants, recommend a single one for any of our awards, a situation with which Carolyn and Minno Ralmon, nascent pop star and judge, agreed. Sheila Moloney, teacher of Sunshine cookery and judge, did, mercifully, find a couple of places she liked, though she also encountered restaurants which were "closed" at nine o'clock in the evening.
So just what is going on in Temple Bar? The experiences of our judges suggest that a divide has opened up between the many restaurants in the quarter. Quite simply, there are restaurants where effort, talent, creativity and professionalism are evident in every action. And, then, there are the cynical places, where the restaurateurs know they can count on gullible tourists and weekenders to fill their seats. They are not concerned, once they have the punter's money, if they ever see them again.
These restaurants will not endure, of course. But for the time being they will linger on doing their job badly, and causing a problem for the good restaurateurs in the area. Temple Bar, like any area busily populated with restaurants, divides into the very good and the very bad. As Gerry pointed out, "in some places, the standards of service and cooking are shockingly bad. On top of that, there is only a small amount of native produce being used in many of the restaurants."
Enough of the bad. What about the good?
Well, the good can be very good indeed, and what is terrific about Temple Bar is that the good exists in many different categories. This, indeed, is proof that the brave experiment of eating can work brilliantly, and that quality can be found right across the range.
Petra brought a gaggle of teenagers to Thunder Road and had a ball, thoroughly charmed and impressed by a restaurant which "delivers exactly what it promises. The five 17 year olds were mesmerised". The food was great, the quantities were great - which makes for good value - the wine list was well priced, and the loos were immaculate.
Helen loved the fact that in Thomas Read's you have a bar where "they do what they want to do very well indeed". Both Minno and Carolyn loved The Old Mill, and its relaxed ambience and service. Sheila and Gerry loved Pierre's, with Sheila praising the service, from a young Scotsman, which she described as "tender", while Gerry found the cooking of "excellent quality". Gerry also liked the pizzas in Il Pasticcio. For a special night out, Sheila wants to head back to the "pampering" arms of Les Freres Jacques. Other restaurants which our judges enjoyed included the Terrace cafe in the Temple Bar Hotel, the Rendezvous Bar, and last year's winner, The Chameleon, which continues to captivate and charm all and sundry.
But, if these were the good spots, who was going to scoop the prestigious Beck's Taste of Temple Bar Awards? Let's start with the award for Best Wine List, which was taken by the funky, popular Mermaid Cale. The list here is short, well chosen and unpredictable, the notes are useful and original, and there are lots of wines which are available either by the glass, or by the half bottle. A clear winner.
The award for Best Service just had to go to Pierre's, for where else would you get service which you could call "tender"? The Elephant & Castle chased this decision all the way home, with Bill full of praise for service which ensured that you had "a really good time".
Adopting a broad approach to what constitutes ethnic food - why should "ethnic" only ever mean eastern? - led to Thunder Road walking off with this award, its up to the minute mix of Yankee cooking pairing with a pumped up atmosphere to produce the very best time.
THE award for Best Atmosphere was a unanimous decision in favour of the Elephant & Castle and the reasoning of the judges was particularly interesting in this category. The E&C got it because the character of the place changes all the time: perfect for a quiet breakfast, brilliant for a lively Sunday brunch, just right for a forking lunch, blissful for a quiet dinner for two at 10 p.m. Of course, this ever changing mood is consummately assisted by knock out cooking.
The E&C was a contender for the overall Temple Bar Award, but after much deliberation this went to The Tea Rooms, Michael Martin's restaurant outpost of The Clarence Hotel. The Tea Rooms won because, in the words of Bill, it enjoys cooking "in which you could taste every single ingredient", and because it offered this in conjunction with superb service and at a price which while not cheap - represented good value for money. Above all, an evening in the restaurant is memorable. We also much respected the ambition of the Clarence, and its desire to forge a very clear and organic identity. It has personality, and pizazz, and professionalism, and as such is a worthy winner of the second Beck's Taste of Temple Bar Award.