Dublin Daily, April 8, 2003.

A feast fit for the hungriest sailor at Mermaid

Verdict: A delicious feast both full and satisfying. Around 100 Euro for two.

"We'll go down to the Mermaid Café and I will buy you a bottle of wine. And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down," I sang over the phone.

"That's great. Did you write that?"said Lefty, my fellow guitar-playing conspirator. " No, Joni Mitchell did, but I wasa probably her inspiration." (I met her once in 1968).

I go down to the Mermaid Café quite a lot. I'd love to smash their empty course-rimmed glasses down. And not being overly padded in the old gluteus maximus, and having a slightly dodgy back, I'd like to smash the 'Shaker-meets-repentance stool' chairs too.

Also maybe chuck out a few tables and push the rest farther apart. Where's the joy in dining out if you can't impart a scurrilous rumour to your best mate without the world sharing the secret? Why should you have to save the scandal for the taxi ride home?

The Mermaid Café is without doubt Dublin's most enjoyable dining experience. No it's not a Thorntons or Guilbaud's. Fine dining is not where it's at. But I love the high-decibel conversation generated by the ponytail-to-pinstripe clientele.

And while the place seems understaffed, service never gets ragged - a little frayed around the edges maybe; still, they always find time to debate key topics like whether you'll gain more pleasure from the loin of lamb than the confit pork.

House wines are well chosen and fairly priced - we liked the 20 Euro Penedes reserva. If you want to go upmarket, there are some nifty New World beauties you won't find elsewhere. The food is modern in concept, but tilted towards satisfying keen appetites rather than gaining the chef membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy. No pointilist paintings with Jus or coulis, no LeCorbusier towers, no spun sugar abstracts.

Picture windows on two sides lend, Lefty observed, an air of dining on a ship while gazing out at those on deck. I imagined Captain Ahab as a man with a beard and a peaked cap hoved into view, though he was probably only parking cars.

Succulent

After a glass of Italian Chardonnay, which was, I'm pleased to say, light on boring old melons and peaches, our starters arrived. My confit of duck salad was succulent and stylish but not a patch on Lefty's New England crab cakes that, untypically, contained more crab than crumb. If these are what they eat in New England, I now know why people try and row the atlantic east to west.

When it came to the main course, he got a fillet steak, of good size and excellent quality. I got a who;e aquarium! The giant fish casserole came piled high above a soup bowl. So high I had visions of the contents unbalancing and shoaling unto my lap. The crown of this king-size treat consisted of seven or eight fat-bellied langoustines. I devoured these, then attacked The stack of mussels.

In the basement was an assortment of fish: Hake, cod, salmon, ray and more, all enveloped in a delicious Thai flavoured soup that I slurped up with a spoon before joyfully mopping the bowl with the Mermaid's good bread.

Which is why I could only manage half a desert. Pity, their Pecan pie is a benchmark by which to judge its kind.

I can feel my arteries shrinking," said Lefty, climbing in regardless. We finished with good espressi then went out on deck looking for the great white whale. We didn't find him maybe he was in the casserole.

Ernie Whalley is Deputy Editor of FOOD & WINE magazine.