The Irish Times - Saturday, October 9, 2010

Could try harder

AVIVA STADIUM FACILITIES: A notch above typical stadium offerings but I was told the men's toilet had a lone hand dryer MUSIC: Mainly fanfares for Leinster scores WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes FOOD PROVENANCE: Zilch PHOTOGRAPH: KEVIN HORAN/GETTY

CATHERINE CLEARY

THE SMELL OF diesel and beef fat wafts around the dark empty streets, where waiting burger stands sit in separate puddles of generator light. There’s a roar from the stadium. Some black-clad drink-promotion girls are getting their gear from a man in a jeep. He’s handing them harnesses. Maybe they’re going to scale the outside and drop on to the pitch, Mission Impossible-style.

I’m late for the match at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium and on a mission to see if the food inside can live up to its surroundings. Friends who have experienced the posh seats say the food is great. The stadium website promises “innovative, creative and varied” food. On match nights, it says it will serve 2,000 portions of fish and chips, 4,000 speciality gourmet burgers and 5,000 hot beef sandwiches.

I’m clutching a ticket to steerage, and somewhere inside this bowl of light and Leinster fans is a gourmet fast-food experience with my name on it.

It starts with a promising sign on the grey concrete wall beyond the turnstile directing staff towards the kitchen. It turns out there are many kitchens in the Aviva, most of them the serving-hatch sort where the heat lamps make the wearing of a Guinness fleece seem like a punishment for the pleasant young servers. I’m on the fifth floor of the East Stand and our burger joint is recovering from the pre-match feeding frenzy and preparing for half time.

“Food” is spelled out in brushed steel letters over the hatch. The word gourmet is used in the brief menu and the fish and chips are said to be in a “tempura” batter. So far, so pleasant. A good burger is a guilty pleasure, the heat of the meat softening the bap, juices soaking into the bread, maybe some soft, browned onions and just a bit of ketchup. Fist food, designed to be eaten with one hand and no dignity.

And so to the game. The first glimpse of the pitch and the capacity crowd is jaw-dropping. My friend, an American in Ireland who has taken rugby to her heart, is wearing her Leinster scarf and a wide grin. There is a touch of Breakfast at Tiffany’s about the place. Above us there’s a perfect velvet-black sky and the floodlights are making the turf and everyone on it look box fresh. It’s easy to forget the tumbleweed blowing around Nama hotel suites outside. Holly Golightly would have liked “the proud look of it”, and that feeling that “nothing very bad could happen to you there”.

But it does and it comes in white cardboard cartons. At half-time we make it to the hatch and place our order. There are queues seven and eight deep. We order a plain burger and the “tempura” fish and chips, with two bottles of water. It comes to €17.80. The young man asks if I’d mind waiting for the fish and chips. That’s fine. A white cardboard box with a “P” on it is pushed forward. Seconds later the fish and chips follows. So that constitutes a wait when you’re feeding thousands.

Next comes the jostle to the ketchup table and the realisation that a pint of beer would have been a much better drinks order. You can’t balance a cardboard carton of food on top of a water bottle. And they confiscate the lids (no Axl Rose attacks here). So you can’t grip it under your arm. We put the open bottles between our feet to free up a hand to eat.

“I’ve never seen anything quite so plain as that,” the friend says, lifting the bap lid off her burger. It’s a diagram of a meal. The pattie appears to be without meat juices as if it’s sealed in an invisible membrane. It needs ketchup, if only to add a bit of moisture. The “tempura” batter on my fish is about as fluffy and crisp as a damp sock. The watery white fish tastes like it was blast-frozen as soon as it flopped out of the sea. The chips are okay, potato-y in a competent sort of way. But there are no tables, not even the standing sort, to let you balance the food and rip open a vinegar sachet. The ketchup station is as busy as a petrol pump on Budget day morning. And I draw the line at putting my food on the floor. I struggle to finish before chucking the component parts into separate recycling bins.

Back in our seats I ask the friend’s friend his opinion of the burgers. His thumb goes emphatically down. “Like chewing on a scrum cap,” he adds later. Walking away with the Irish Times photographer, we see the stadium shooting wands of laser light into the clouds above the pretty rooftops of Havelock Square, the mothership sending messages to her people. Food encounters of a very ordinary kind await you here. Pedestrian mass catering at a sports stadium? It’s hardly a surprise, just a bit disappointing, when the rest of it rises above that to the spectacular.

Fast food for two with two drinks came to €17.80.