Dining Out / Not Irish, but good

I have always liked the stereotype of the Irishman who is always smiling, always just a little bit drunk, always digging in to huge piles of food, and invariably tossing off pleasantries such as "Top of the morning to you." Apparently most of the world also likes this image, because it seems impossible to find a city without its own "genuine Irish pub."

Those pubs, as much fun as they might be, are anything but genuine. Like the Irish expression "may the bluebird of happiness fly up your nose," which originated not in Ireland but with American television personality Johnny Carson, the Irish pubs of Madrid, Manhattan, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv also have their roots in the 1960s United States. It was then that Americans fell in love with things foreign, and imitation German beer gardens, French crepe restaurants and Irish pubs became a major aspect of middle-class, mass-market dining out.

Nearly all of these "genuine" Irish pubs have a good deal of dark woodwork, low lighting from imitation antique fixtures, etched glass quite often made out of plastic, framed posters advertising various Irish beers, pipe tobacco and dairy products, and a host of more or less traditional but almost invariably made in Taiwan bric-a-brac. What differentiates them from many pubs in Dublin, Belfast and Kilkenny are that they lack the beer and food-stained sawdust on the floor, the vague smell of urine in every restroom and the inescapable nightly brawls.

Despite it all, such places can be pleasant, and a recent evening found me at Temple Bar in Cinema City. True, the background music was more Simon and Garfunkel than Irish jigs or folk music, and the etched glass bore advertisements for Belgian and not Irish beers. All of this made me chuckle, so in order to find some semblance of true Irishness, I started off with half a liter of draught Guinness. Like many Irishmen, I downed that first one rather quickly and then, with food on the table, made my way more slowly through a second glass.

The first things to make their way to our table were small bowls of pickles and potato chips, which, while remarkably tasty, are designed to be as salty and spicy as possible in order to make you thirsty - and therefore order more beer. Likewise, the Temple Bar fries came in a huge bowl filled with fried potatoes and sausage slices topped generously with a moderately hot chili sauce. I suppose civilized folks eat a dish like this with a fork, but we did as the Irish did, simply eating with our hands. The sauce all over our hands and faces added to the pleasure of our dining and conversation. I was, however, grateful that we received a generous stack of both paper napkins and wet naps.

From here we made our way to an offering of matjas herring that the menu called "the best ever." These were full fillets, full of flavor, which we lifted gently with two fingers and slid gently into our mouths.

Next on our agenda was a generous bowl of crispy chicken wings, once again, coated with a hot, sweet sauce in order to go well with the beer we were drinking. These were delicious and we had a great time licking our fingers between bites. We also ordered two long, plump veal sausages, which were excellent, but were accompanied by a rather anemic and flavorless sauerkraut.

None of the dishes we had tried up until this point were truly Irish. However, they were all tasty and great fun to eat. So we decided to try two "real" Irish dishes - the shepherds' pie and an Irish roast. That was an error. A true shepherd's pie has a thick base of highly seasoned ground beef topped with a thick layer of mashed potatoes, and is served piping hot in a casserole dish. To my sorrow, what we received demonstrated precisely why Irish and English cookery has attained such a bad name - the dish was distinctly underseasoned and bland. The slices of veal shoulder in the roast, steamed in Guinness, had been so overcooked that they had been denuded not only of flavor but of texture.

We split a dessert, bananas sauteed in rum and served with a soft meringue and vanilla ice cream, which was simple but delicious and went very well with our espressos. Before 8 P.M., the pub is lively but still quiet enough to hold a civilized discussion. As the evening goes on, however, it gets more crowded and noisy. As for the service, as in real Irish pubs, the waitresses are polite but nevertheless smiling and very friendly.

Based on the dishes we sampled, a meal for four will come to about NIS 400. My advice - stay away from the Shepherd's pie and the Irish roast, and you'll do just fine. There is a fabulous list of beers on offer here. Half-liter glasses of Guinness or most other beers are NIS 28 each.

Temple Bar: In the Cinema City complex, Glilot. Open Sun-Fri 5 P.M.-1 A.M. and Saturday from noon. Tel. (03) 699-5536.