A funny thing happened halfway through dinner at Diep Le Shaker. A flustered-looking waitress went around all the tables asking if anyone had parked a 92 D Mercedes outside. At every table she seemed to be getting the same wisecrack - "What? Only a 92? You must be joking, har har har!"
As she worked her way down the room, there were smiles and laughs, and in the end, nobody owned up to the thing. You didn't want to be the person with the antique Merc walking down through the restaurant with everyone looking on in a pitying kind of way, so we never found out who the vehicularly challenged person was. Maybe one of the waitressses or the kitchen porter.
Meanwhile, my own middle-management, secondhand car was parked right around the corner, outside Pat Henry's gym. "Do you think we should go in there for a quick go on the machines, or a massage or something?" said my friend, as we were early. We had both been members aeons ago but lapsed the way you do, having paid up for months and months.
Instead we went to Doheny and Nesbitts for a drink and walked back to the restaurant, promising ourselves that this was the last big night out of the summer. Tomorrow we diet.
All we had heard about Diep Le Shaker, apart from the fact that nobody seems to know how to say the name properly or what it means, is that it's popular, very popular with the Dublin 4 set. It's a big, airy, purpose-built restaurant with an atrium style ceiling, east meets west decor, and an exciting Chinese and Thai menu.
You walk in and think - yes, this is a good place, and that's even before you've tasted a mouthful. But you have to be in the mood for it, and, boy, is it dressy. You can't get a table here at weekends, so we slipped in mid-week and found it buzzing - a great buzz but not a din. Ranks of tables were filled with well-dressed, well-heeled, hair-slicked-back, rich people out for the night enjoying their money.
We were being ushered upstairs but put in a plea for a ground-floor table and got the last one, in the middle of the room. Upstairs isn't Siberia - in fact, it might be smarter still, judging by the parade of glamorous folk that went up and down all evening. There was something vaguely familiar about a lot of the people . . . some were definitely models, and several men looked as though they had been in the news.
We had a very enjoyable peek around, pretending to be looking for a waitress or into our handbags, sussing out who was who. We were rewarded with the sight of two boyos of our acquaintance, wives safely tucked away with the kids in the mobiles out of town, entertaining two very pretty girls. They were still there hours later and, as we left just after one o'clock, they were taking the foil off a bottle of Dom Perignon and talking about going on to the Burlo.
Clearly, champagne is the tipple of choice here and snipes of Veuve Clicquot were flying. Who were we to argue? It's probably not what you are supposed to have with Thai food, but we found it pretty accommodating.
"You know there's going to be a crash when people go around ordering champagne all the time," a businessmen friend and veteran of the London slump had told me earlier that day. Cheers, so!
Despite the very silly name, this is a smart place with success stamped all over it. They didn't try to do anything too eye-popping with the decor - instead it is an elegant room with creamy yellow walls, tall but comfortable raspberry upholstered chairs, mirrors, pot plants, and a print or two. The staff pull the whole scheme together with their waistcoats striped in yellow pink and black.
The food is quite simply sensational. I started with Exotic Thai chicken salad, and got a raised dish of light salad and coriander leaves with a lime dressing and thin slices of marinated chicken. It was fresh and tangy to the point of zingy. Kathy couldn't resist a plate of tords - little fish cakes served with a light chilli dressing. This was more standard fare.
Patsey's Diep Special soup came at the end of a long list of soups that included shark's fin. It involved dense, creamy coconut milk with chicken and lime leaves, delicately served in a tiny bowl. My main course of "Tiger Cry" beef was extraordinarily good - imagine roughly sliced beef, slightly charred at the edges but incredibly tender. This was an outstanding bit of beef, two-year-old heifer, or something like it. It sounds simple but I could never achieve that sort of taste and texture at home.
Kathy had one of the priciest dishes on the menu - Black Sole Sacha at £18 - but what a spectacle it was. The fish was stripped from the skin and nuggets of it were deep fried in aromatic crispy batter, the skin fried, too, for effect, and the whole thing put back together again. It was a bit showy but tasted heavenly.
Patsey's chicken curry might have paled in comparison but we kept going back to it. The plates sat on the table for quite some time and we finished it when it was virtually cold. It was just as good that way and, since it had been freshly made, there was no nasty msg-type congealing going on. I want to go back again just to have this dish.
SERVICE was alternately slick and slack. Orders are fed into a computer and the food arrives on time without fuss. At least most of it did. My main course was a few minutes behind schedule so that the rice that had been served onto my plate from a covered dish had gone cold by the time the main dish arrived. Then the rice itself was pretty poor.
"If I made that myself I'd consider it a flop," said Kathy gazing at the sticky balled-up rice on her plate. I actually like it sticky but what I don't like is paying £4 for a minuscule amount - say 10p worth. A strange economy when expensive meat and fish is served in generous portions. Chinese steamed vegetables cost the same, and were absolutely fresh, crunchy and succulent - a mix of broccoli, mangetout, lettuce and carrots that had been swiftly cooked without a hint of soy or msg.
We ordered mineral waters all around at the beginning and got them towards the end of the meal. Otherwise the waitresses were very nice, polite and competent and there was none of that trying to hurry you out of the place three minutes after you've eaten.
The ladies, by the way, is a good place to sober up in - it's painted ice-blue and features enough glaring lights to have you diving for instant cover into your make-up bag.
We were a bit heavy-handed with the champagne, which explained the bill of £209 for three, including service. A less extravagant trio could have got out for around £30 a head.
Diep Le Shaker Pembroke Lane Dublin 2 Tel 01 6611829 Open Monday to Saturday, lunch and dinner.
