Last week I lured Vivian Cassells and Sile Sheehy away from their desks at The Irish Times to have lunch at Satchels, the restaurant in the School House Hotel on Northumberland Road in Ballsbridge. This was an attempt to be clever and newsy since Vivian and Sile have been manning the CAO hotline at the office for the last couple of weeks, giving information to parents on how to fill out those forms. So, education experts and a former school. Very neat. I had a hidden agenda too, because I love hearing Vivian's stories about the anxious mothers of Ireland. Education is something that people don't give a thought to for years, until their children start coming up to the crucial exam years and then they are positively ravenous for information.
The CAO hotline is designed to help would-be students fill out their college application form, yet most of the callers are mothers. They call to ask a simple enough question about what they should write in this or that box, but the calls often develop into counselling sessions about their children's prospects. Vivian comes in to the office twice a year, in January, and in August, when the CAO offers come out. For several years we shared an office and it was a tonic to listen to him soothing motherly nerves all over the country. He has a wonderful way with people, and "gosh, isn't he marvellous, 650 points, you must be very proud of him", was a phrase he had to use very often. Typically, it was the mothers whose children had done very well who would call up, not so much for advice but dying to talk to someone about their brilliant off-spring.
So, off to Satchels we went. The School House Hotel is the handsome redbrick building on Northumberland Road that was once St Stephen's School.
It was designed by the Irish architect, Benjamin Woodward, with lots of Victorian gothic flourishes including a little turreted tower. Many people passing it over the years must have dreamt of converting it to a house, particularly as it lay empty for some time. But, the developers finally got their foot in the door and the school was converted into a hotel two years ago. It seems to have been a big success since it opened and it is particularly popular as a Friday evening drinking spot, especially in summer when people spill out onto the garden in front.
There is a car park, a miracle in this area, but at lunchtime you have to get there early to find a slot. I took ages to manoeuvre myself into a tiny space, and then noticed two Mercs taking up two spaces each further along.
The restaurant is in what might have been an assembly hall, or a very big schoolroom. It is a high vaulted room with a mezzanine level at one end, and tall windows through which you can hear nothing of the traffic outside. It is suitably dark and hushed, with muted mulberry coloured wallpaper and toning carpets set into a timber floor.
There are some schoolroom props - a row of bound books here and there, and the menus are stored in satchels, but the theme is not done to death. No blackboards and chalk and the tables don't have hidden recesses with apple cores and pencil shavings in them.
The room was almost full when we arrived and most people seemed to be deep in business conversation, briefcases at their feet. The menu is businesslike too, with just four choices of starters, main courses and desserts at a set price of £13.50.
The wine list had to be asked for, which suggests that this isn't a place for a long boozy lunch. However, we were determined to have wine, and chose something light and dry from New Zealand to start with - a Lawson's Retreat Semillon Blanc, and a beaujolais to follow.
The starters sounded good. Vivian volunteered to try the ham hock while Sile opted for noodles with smoked haddock and smoked salmon. That left me with a choice of soup or chicken liver pate. I had the pate but God, it was near inedible.
A sizeable grey-brown slab of the stuff arrived with a salad scattered with walnuts. It tasted as if it had been made from pure butter, but far too much of it - so much, in fact, that it tasted more like butter than anything else. There was a sharp and not very pleasant finish to it. "I think it's on the turn," said Sile, and that put the cap on it. Instead, I ate the nicely dressed salad, the walnuts and some of the fresh, nutty brown bread from the basket.
Vivian's ham hock was a far more interesting affair - the meat fashioned into a coarse terrine and sliced in discs on the plate. He loved it. Sile was very pleased with her smoked haddock and smoked salmon with noodles. The noodles had been gathered into a roll on the plate and were flecked with haddock, the salmon resting underneath on the plate with a light coriander sauce. The trouble here was that the plate was stone cold and the noodles cooled down very fast. I tasted a forkful and it was almost cold, but Sile loved the combination of tastes. I had more chicken as a main course, this time a chicken breast with a butter bean and mushroom sauce. The sauce was very good, with rich creamy consistency, but the chicken was on the tough side. The shared vegetables were very good. We got a bowl of root vegetables, cut in chunks and roasted then scattered with sesame seeds.
Sile was delighted with her baked salmon, while Vivien's pork with a prune and apricot sauce, was, he said, rather like having a main course and a dessert at the same time.
Apart from the food, there were serious matters to discuss. What mothers of Leaving Cert candidates are worried about right now, for instance. They worry about their children having too much money from doing part-time jobs, about them going away on sun holidays when their exams are over, and even before. Now even fifth year kids are taking off to Spain en masse. They worry, of course, about their children not getting into the right college. And an alarming number are worried about the fact that they went through all this CAO business last year, their children are now in college, but they hate it and they want to do something else. Oh dear.
We were almost too full for desserts, but not quite. Sile had a poached pear and declared it perfect, while I had yet another very good creme brulee. Has anyone ever had a dreadful creme brulee? I'd love to hear about it. This one had an extra-crispy top and a little biscuit embedded in it. Perhaps the biscuit could have been fresher but otherwise full marks. Vivian's cheese plate was generous, with three farmhouse cheeses, lots of biscuits and more of those walnuts.
A cafetiere of good, strong coffee followed, and by now we were the only people left in the restaurant. We didn't want to leave but it seemed rude to stay, seeing as the waiter had his coat on. Sile approved of the toilets. "At least they don't smell like school", she said.
The bill came to £79, but almost half of that was spent on wine.
Satchels Restaurant, School House Hotel, Northumberland Road, Dublin 4. Tel 01
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
