Tavernas are something you don't see a lot of in Ireland, but take a walk along the cobbled lane that is Dublin's Henrietta Place (closing your eyes to the dumped garbage and abandoned mattresses) until you come to the tidied up part where you will find the country's first Romanian Taverna. You will be welcomed into The Transylvania with the traditional offering of bread and salt and invited to sit at a candlelit table.
The taverna is simply decorated. One wall is rough stone. The others are whitewashed and hung with red and white embroidered shawls. When you're seated, you'll be handed the menu which is written on a parchment scroll and enclosed in a tooled leather cylinder. Not your everyday menu, by a long chalk. It offers home-made bread, homemade Romanian sausage, and a variety of spiced pork and beef dishes. The wine, naturally enough, is Romanian.
The taverna is Petre Tanase's dream machine for, nearly two years ago, he arrived in Ireland from Romania as an asylum seeker with no real certainty that he would be allowed to stay and make his home here. He and his wife Carmen entered the country illegally. How, he prefers not to say. Behind, in their home town of Constanta in the care of Carmen's mother, they left their two children - a son aged 14 and a daughter aged four.
It was a difficult decision but one they had to make if they were to take charge of their lives.
Petre's story is an extraordinary one - though not, perhaps, any more extraordinary than that of many refugees, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who come to Ireland hoping to make their home here. It all began over 10 years ago when Petre was working in Constanta as an actor and producer, mounting cabarets at restaurants - Carmen is a singer - and putting on musical shows at the Fantasia Theatre.
"I was at the railway station one day, waiting to meet a friend from Bucharest," Petre told me as we sat together over a glass of wine one afternoon in the taverna. "My friend's train was late and I looked everywhere for him. A couple of people come to me and ask if I know somewhere they can stay. They had come to Romania from Ireland because they wanted to adopt a baby." He and Carmen didn't have a lot of room but he brought them home, put them up for 10 days and after the baby was adopted they all kept in touch.
"You see," and he gestures dramatically, "you give with one hand and someone else give to you with the other. Then, I had work because during Ceaucescu's time, theatres did well. Tickets were not dear and most people could afford to go. But in 1989," he says, "it changed. The price of tickets doubled, the Mafiosi came in, and every month we earned less. We had to change our lives. So, we thought, we have hands, we have a brain, we must do something."
He tried to start up a theatre for children but was thwarted by bureaucracy. Next, he had the idea of starting a seaside cafe on the Black Sea but that too presented problems. "Here in Ireland, you have to have a licence to sell alcohol," he says, "but in Romania, you have to have a licence to sell food . . . and that cost a lot of money. After the licence they said I must become a professional chef, so I went to the chef school in Constanta but it was too much: the school one day, the cafe the next."
Their friends in Ireland suggested they come here and maybe open a theatre for children though in the end, it was the taverna. When they arrived, they were put up in Blackrock. "The social welfare people looked after us. It was nice there," Petre says, "though we were very surprised when our case was heard after only two months. But then when the answer came and it was no. We could not stay. So we appealed and this time, we were able to talk to the judge himself and when saw him, I knew he would listen well to our story. Of course if he said no, then, I thought, it is life."
In fact, the judge was a barrister - one on four Appeals Authorities and in this case Peter Finlay, who in the past has been a critic of a system that had not always served the best interests of asylum seekers. "My two concerns," he told me on the phone, "is that everything should be handled independently and openly."
The letter for Petre and Carmen arrived just before Christmas. "Before I open it," Petre remembers, "I say to myself, is God looking down on us? And he was. The letter say we have all rights. We can stay! We have official refugee status and we can work." They went with the solicitor to a pub to celebrate and when the landlord heard the good news, it was drinks on the house. The Department of Justice has since issued them with visas for their children and soon they hope to get one also for Carmen's mother. "She has given us so much help. We could not do all this without her."
In the meantime, at the taverna, it's business as usual. Petre does all the cooking and his business partner, Radu Arteni, originally from Moldavia, helps out most nights. "We are open all night if people want to stay," says Petre, "but we have rules. People must be well-dressed and not make trouble." Has he had some trouble? He has - from other Romanians who came and made themselves too much at home in the taverna and had to be asked to leave.
He has had operational problems too. "When I try to buy something on easy-payment they say yes, okay. But when they know I am Romanian, they say no. Even though I can pay. Even though I have same rights as an Irish citizen. They say I must have Irish passport. And I say but I have residence and they say no, Irish passport. Sometimes, my rights are on paper only."
He would appreciate help with things like how to get a bank loan and VAT. "I wait for the people from the Enterprise Board to come to see me and they say they can't give me any money. I say, I don't need money. I know how to make it. Why don't you tell my story on the radio so people know what we new people can do. Irish people help us and we give something new to the Irish people. They say they will come to me tomorrow but tomorrow was after two months.
"And when I try to get a phone, they cut me off after three weeks because the people who had my number before me didn't pay. You give me lots of trouble, dear lady, just for a phone . . . " he told the Telecom people. Despite his good fortune in getting his status sorted out, you can hear the frustration in his voice as he airs his grievances. Setting up a business is difficult enough without all this.
But the annoyance is temporary. He has to concentrate on his cooking which before was a hobby and is now his business. His speciality is sarmale, which is minced pork, herbs, poached cabbage, cream and smoked bacon. "This is a special dish cooked for weddings and birthdays. It is my favourite." He has regular deliveries from his butcher, and goes to Smithfield market for his vegetables. Soon, he will extend his menu to include things like Irish stew - made with mushrooms and wine. Now that's something that's definitely new.
The Transylvania, 7 Henrietta Place, near The Four Seasons pub. Open 1 p.m. until late. Main dishes cost around £5.80. For vegetarian dishes, ring in advance (086-8767438)