With the school holidays almost over and entertainment options running out, you could do worse than pack the children into the car and take them to a place that looks like a stranded ocean liner at the side of the motorway. We had passed it a hundred times and wondered what it was like.
On a rainy day last week it was time to find out. Really young children would love the trip past the humongous road works at the Firhouse roundabout. There are mountains of earth being moved with diggers of all descriptions in action. But ours, and their friends are past that stage. Instead we were riveted in the front seats listening as one child told us all about the nocturnal goings-on in his parents bedroom.
I had to pretend to be looking into the glove compartment to hide my sniggers, while at the same time, saying "That's enough, now, that's enough, we're not interested in that kind of thing".
First impressions of Joels are good. It is open all day and you don't need to book. We pushed through the big swing doors sometime after 2 p.m. and were seated in a big airy foyer to wait for a table for six. The scale of it is positively American, with a huge carvery area on one side and an a la carte restaurant on the other. It is smart and clean and colourful, with lots of yellow and blue, and sofas upholstered in Jazz Age fabric to match the vaguely Art Deco architecture. And there's air conditioning, although not enough of it to eliminate the smell of meat and gravy.
We had enough time to order a round of minerals and admire the foyer with its lit up cabinets full of colourful glass and, encouragingly, a copy of the River Cafe Cook Book. The children went haywire but the staff didn't seem to mind and there is plenty of room for running and jumping, including a long corridor leading to a private dining room and the toilets. We had to make several visits there, of course, and found them spick and span, big enough to hold a disco in and with special low basins for children or wheelchair users. Several vending machines sell toothpaste or condoms or squirts of perfume and all were examined in detail.
At last we were shown to our table which, alas, was not the ocean liner part looking out over the road, but down below in the main dining room, beside the Carvery and the big open kitchen behind it. That was understandable. The top layer with its cosy curved banquettes was full of men in suits having business lunches. In fact the entire restaurant was filled with suits. Suits and those cobalt blue shirts that seem to have taken over from white in the young executive wardrobe. The staff are dressed in black with garish ties and there are lots of them, waiters and waitresses, bar boys and junior managers, all rushing around with a commendable air of purpose and plenty of friendly smiles.
Soon we were sitting behind huge colourful menus. Essentially the food is what you would expect - burgers, chicken several ways, a bit of Mexican, some pasta dishes, grills galore and a handful of specialities, including vegetarian. Forget the diet. Almost everything is either deep fried or fried, or smothered in some kind of sauce, and there are only two main course salads, both of them full of calories. The waitresses zipped by with huge platefuls of food and colossal wine glasses. A speciality here is the giant Joel glass - it fits a half a bottle of house wine and costs £4.25 a go. The children got paper placemats with menus on them, as well as a clown to colour in and a word game. "There are 11 words in this puzzle", it said. "Can you find them?" By the end of the meal David, aged 37, had found 37 words and was looking mighty pleased with himself.
Two of the four children decided that they would choose from the adult menu, while two stuck to sausages and chips with ice cream to follow. Theo and Andrew opted for a spring roll to start, while older cousin Jack asked for garlic bread to start. As usual with trying to supervise the ordering of drinks (No more Coke!) and distributing the rather butty little crayons that came with the place mats, I managed to order the wrong thing for myself. The thing to have here is probably a burger or a steak (guaranteed heifer beef according to the menu) but I found myself saying "Chicken Maryland", possibly because the place feels a bit like an enormous American diner, and Dean Martin was crooning in the background. We shared a plate of hot spicy chicken wings as a starter but they were terrible. They were warm and soggy and looked as though they had been swimming in their oily BBQ sauce all week. Andrew and Theo described the spring rolls as alright, with nice bits of chicken in them, but far too many peas. I tasted one and thought it better than that. It tasted freshly made with real ingredients, not just a mass of bean sprouts. They came with a little heap of salad that included what must have been tinned potato salad. Ugh. Jack meanwhile had a mini baguette of garlic bread to himself and though it looked pretty soggy to me, he loved it.
"You'll be stuffed after all that," said Gillian the waitress cheerfully, as she took away the plates and brought a jug of orange cordial which stopped them ordering fizzy drinks. Theo confounded her by eating a mansize cheeseburger and chips as his main course, while Jack ordered the same but with bacon on top.
My Chicken Maryland was a sight to behold, a whole breast of chicken crusted over and deep fried to a rich red brown colour, sitting on a couple of back rashers, with grilled tomatoes on the side, and - the very reason that I don't like Chicken Maryland - a banana and a pineapple ring on the side, both ferociously deep fried. It came with garlic potatoes which were deep fried too. I almost had a turn looking at it, but under all that southern-spice grit the chicken was tender and good and the garlic potatoes were addictive. David had roast beef from the Carvery, which wasn't a wise choice because we couldn't actually see any beef under the carvery lights in front of us. "Could I have it rare, or as rare as it gets?" he asked not very hopefully. What arrived was your standard Sunday-roast-in-a-country-hotel, big slabs of grey brown meat, slathered in gravy. It came with carrots and turnip smothered in a cheesy sauce and some limp broccoli that had been dredged up from the bottom of the bain marie. The sausages and chips were very good, but the servings were enormous with six or eight fat cocktail sausages on each plate and a mound of thick-cut crispy chips. One serving would easily do two children. Everyone got individual dishes of tomato ketchup to avoid fights. By now the staff were in clear up mode and I had a great view of the pot boy cleaning out the carvery area with buckets of hot water being sluiced around the huge stainless steel troughs.
Big ice-creams were in order for dessert. David and Andrew ordered sundaes that came in nice tall glasses dripping in chocolate and butterscotch sauce and topped by a sensational peak of whipped cream from a can. Jack wanted something more sophisticated and, against Gillian's advice, ordered the hot sticky toffee pudding. It was a miniature steamed pudding - like the ones that Heinz do in the tin - stranded in a lake of toffee sauce with lashings of cream and a cherry on top. He took a couple of bites and said it was too rich, just as Gillian said it would be. The ice cream was pretty tasteless but the sauces were good.
This is definitely a place to go if you haven't eaten for a couple of days and want your money's worth. The bill for six, including minerals, sparkling water and one coffee came to £70.85. They take Laser and Visa cards but won't accept cheques.
Joels Restaurant, Newlands Cross, Dublin 22. Tel: 01 459 2968. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days.
