Sile and I went to a restaurant for dinner last night.
Unusual enough for us, who, since my retirement, have become devotees of home cooking, exceptional because this was our first visit back to our old restaurant.

We shut down Dwyers Restaurant, which had been our home, our business, and our life for fifteen years,when we sold it last June, and we and moved out and into our new house in Griffith Place last September.
Since then the building has been effectively eviscerated, only its four walls left standing.
(The building was a listed one so these had to be retained. )
On several occasions both the architect and the new owner had invited us down to observe the work in progress but I had to plead a totally sentimental unwillingness to see my old home in its destroyed state.

When we had bought the building in 1989 it had been reasonably priced.
It was on one of the most run-down streets in Waterford.
Built at about 1790, its former Georgian glory days were long gone.
It had served many years, at the turn of the 19th Century, as a barracks for the old Royal Irish Constabulary, operated as the “Sack and Bag Company” during the 1950’s and 60’s. It had been the home of St. Dominic’s Credit Union for several years after that and had , for a very brief period just before we bought it, been a bistro.
Certainly the whole of Waterford thought we were mad to be opening a restaurant in Mary Street. Ten bank managers assured us of our insanity and refused to put their money into such a location.
(One particular gem told us he would never bring his wife out to Mary Street by night. Not only did he get to eat his words he also got to eat dinner, with his wife, virtually every Friday for the next ten years.)
Bank manager number eleven however believed in us and so, with some more financial help from my brothers and sisters (God Bless Ye !) we were able finally to buy number 8 Mary Street.

The history of the restaurant is another days story. It was as a home that and I and my three daughters came to love the place over the next 15 years.

It was huge.
Roughly 4,500 square feet in total area even with 1,500 of those given to the restaurant we still had a magnificent play ground.
We made the attic our living/dining/kitchen and with 1,000 square feet and five windows opening to the south and east it was a living room to treasure.
The children roamed free in the rest of the house. Once they got to disco going age they and their friends saved themselves from the perils of late night city life by moving in a pack down to Mary Street after the disco where there were beds and space for plenty.
We quite frequently found ourselves with 12 or more for Sunday breakfast.
On one memorable Christmas we invited all of Sile’s family down and managed to house 27 in reasonable comfort.

The house in 1960’s terms had good vibes.

This was why and I studiously avoided going near Mary Street for the last 7 months. As I explained to Guy Kellnor, the new owner, I would be quite happy to see it but only in its new, made over state as the Brasserie Orange.
Guy rang us last week to tell us the restaurant was now ready and invited us to dinner.
Despite or best intentions we had managed to pass the restaurant once or twice in the last months, and Guy had told us what his plans were for the interior so the shock was not perhaps all it might have been.
It has become a modern, exciting restaurant space.
He has opened up the whole ground floor, removed the staircase to the back, even opened up most of the ceiling to the first floor to make the room twice the height it was. The kitchen (with state of the art equipment) is now open to view and he has put a huge mirror on the east wall which reflects both the new mezzanine dining area and two magnificent modern chandeliers.
We loved it.
My first reaction was to say to Guy that he had jumped Dwyers Restaurant from the 19th to the 21st century cleverly bypassing the 20th .

The food was also terrific. A clever mixture of traditional brasserie food (I had an Osso Bucco, Sile a Coq au Vin ) with some good modern twists (a mouth tingling Asian Crab cake with Chilli Sauce was memorable) at amazingly competitive prices, a lot of the main courses came in at about €20 or even less.
Our own Pat Madden, who had been with us in Dwyers at the beginning, was in attendance but he was the only familiar thing there.
The service was marvellously kind and attentive and we felt like minor royalty as the manager, waiters and even the chef came and sat with us at various times. Even the customers were having a hard time coming to terms with us as, back in the future our presence was a little anachronistic.

It was a lovely experience, one we both had been dreading but as we saw, life moves on and it seems evident that the restaurant, our fourth daughter, has married well.
We wish her every happiness.