Dublin's Michelin-starred restaurants are genuinely romantic places these evenings. The corporate credit-card crowd are thin on the ground, writes CATHERINE CLEARY

IT’S THE ONLY laugh in Steve McQueen’s brilliantly bleak movie Shame. Actor Michael Fassbender brings a work colleague to a restaurant on a toe-curlingly clunky first-date. It’s made all the more excruciating by the waiter hovering hummingbird style and choosing to dart at precisely the worst moments. Every gulp and embarrassed pause lingers. The cinema audience laughs in recognition and more than a little relief.

Restaurants can be romantic places. What’s not to love about candles, flowers, music and good food? Yet the restaurant cynics call Valentine’s the worst night of the year. A captive audience can bring out the over-priced dross as uninspiring as a hot-housed wilting red rose.

Dublin’s Michelin-starred restaurants are genuinely romantic places these evenings. The corporate credit-card crowd are thin on the ground. Tables, often booked well in advance, are being taken by couples and families who want a memorable evening in return for walking past the early-bird blackboards.

Six years ago, Kevin Thornton said he thought the boom was bad for fine-dining restaurants. Everything was so fast and furious that people had no time to spend on the long symphony of a tasting menu.

Thornton is still in the Fitzwilliam Hotel on Stephen’s Green in the space that is Dublin’s most moaned-about dining room. The room is still brown and still has all the personality of an expensive airport lounge but we’ll get over that. Brilliant food is a fair exchange for a glimpse of Georgian stuccowork high above your head.

I’ve arrived early on a freezing night when my ideal hot date would have been a Lemsip. There are two other tables of two and when my lone presence is added to the mix conversation drops to a churchy hush. There’s nowhere to hide in Thorntons. There are no booths or nooks. Everyone in the dining room is on display, which is part of the fun of the place when it’s busy. When it’s quiet like tonight it can make the room feel a little too grown up.

Things pick up when my company arrives and we realise that when three tables are busily talking separately to each other all is well. The €76 set menu which has simple choices for starters, desserts and mains, looks excellent. Service here is formal (a silver crumb sweeper is deployed several times) but charming. We opt for three wines by the glass, each paired to a different course.

First up comes one of those off-menu extras (the posh perks) that you get in starred restaurants. It’s a smoke and glass affair, a tiny goldfish bowl-shaped dish, with a glass cone keeping the contents inside. When the smoke clears a slice of smoked mackerel, skin glowing golden and gunmetal grey is revealed, with wasabi roe. It’s a gorgeous and generous amuse-bouche. The separate cone glass has a viscous concoction of fish and cucumber finished with a green cucumber ice cube.

For my real starter, four fat Dublin bay prawns arrive spooning each other in a fluffy bowl of prawn bisque and truffle sabayon. Each prawn has a transparently thin slice of white Alba truffle on top. The prawns are thready and luscious, a world of texture away from their rubbery frozen tiger cousins and the dish is note perfect. The second starter, which comes with an Austrian dessert wine, is a “heavenly” foie gras plate. There’s a sautéed slice on one side of the plate and a parfait on the other so light that it tastes like it’s been whipped with downy angel feathers. A glass of Austrian Beerenauslese (€14) is a perfect flavour partner.

A plate of moulard duck comes as slices of dark pink meat in a teepee formation over a small mound of great braised red cabbage. There’s a tiny perfect tree trunk portion of potato, crisply finished on top, and the meat has been glazed with honey and pistachios. It’s all on the sweet side of the scale but pleasantly so. And my Casa Emma Chianti (€13) balances it nicely. The other main is a robust loin of Wicklow sikka deer which has been coated in a fiery mixture of crushed coffee and black peppercorns and comes with tarragon gnocchi and parsnips cut into cones. The wonderful dark meat is smothered in a Valrhona chocolate sauce in a decadent declaration that January is officially over. A robust glass of St Joseph Cuvée du Papy (€14) proves itself up to the punch of the flavours.

Another lovely tidbit arrives in the form of a pre-dessert, a tiny perfect dish of passion fruit crème brûlée with a quenelle of mango sorbet on an ornate silver spoon. There’s nothing ho-hum about the prune and Armagnac souffle. It has a neat square sliced in its top, into which is poured crème anglaise and then a perfect quenelle of pear sorbet slides down into the spongy depths in a small rush of steam. Finally the square lid is popped back down and it’s ready to eat. It’s a big, boozy, blowsy flavour, with the Armagnac and prunes laced through the feathery souffle. I get an apple tarte tatin which is gorgeous, toffee apple caramel on top and crisp pastry beneath. There’s a less successful pressed apple terrine and a pain d’épices (spice bread) ice-cream, which combines the heat of ginger with the chill of ice-cream to fiendish success. A cider granité rounds it off with a blast of over-ripe apple that tastes like a warm autumn orchard on a teaspoon.

Finally a decaff espresso and an elaborate mint leaf tea (€7 apiece) that comes on a wooden drip tray bring the curtain down on this theatre. There is an elaborate pouring ritual, including a scalding of the outside of a doll’s house-sized tea pot and finally the pale yellow liquid is poured into a tiny glass. It’s fussy and fabulous.

Lunch in Thornton’s is a steal. Dinner is a real treat, best saved for the keeper, rather than a passing Valentine’s crush. Dinner for two with three glasses of wine, tea and coffee came to €207.

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Thorntons Restaurant

128 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2,

tel: 01-4787008

Music: Muted background type

Facilities: Marbled, swish and decorated with Thornton's beautiful photographs Food provenance: Very good. Herbs come picked in the Dublin mountains, in season Wheelchair access: Yes