In thirty years of dining out in Ireland I can say with complete conviction that one thing has changed: it isn't as easy as it was to get a bad meal. That's not to say that a good meal is easy to find - just that the awful, the shoddy, the unimaginative and the plain unappetising are not as abundant as once they were.

What is easily available now is the mediocre: meals that are not in any way disagreeable and not in any way memorable. Meals such as these can be found in any European country, but there is a difference between here and there. In France acceptable and unremarkable meals can be got in any Routier; in Italy you can eat an equivalent journeyman meal in any trattoria; similarly in Spain. But in those countries the price of such workmanlike cuisine is low. There is a correlation between quality and cost. Even well-made food in unpretentious surroundings comes at unpretentious prices.

Why that should not be the case here is puzzling. There really seems to be no equivalence. Whenever I'm persuaded to try somewhere that supposedly fits the bill of decent quality and reasonable price, the other kind of bill invariably comes in at around £25 a head just for the food, which puts it in the same price bracket as many Michelinstarred restaurants on the continent. I just can't help believing that brasseries, bistros and trattorias should be priced at less than restaurants serving haute cuisine.

There is another point worth making and it's this: there are two distinct kinds of restaurants: those that are run by the owner or the chef-patron and those that are run by employees of an absent owner. All the really serious restaurants that I know of are in the first group. Formula food fits well into the second group - pizza and burger franchises - but really good food needs the constant eye of the owner. It needs the personal touch.

La Stampa is a curious mix of quality and formula. There is no contact with anyone other than the waiter or waitress serving your table. No sommelier, no maitre, no owner. As I say, that suits me fine when I'm ordering a pizza or a burger, but when I'm paying serious money I want more sense of occasion - and specifically a sense that my presence isn't simply another table in an endless conveyor-belt of customers. It may well be just that; but I would like, in short, to feel that my being there is not a matter of inconsequence to the owner.

It has a fine dining-room, very high-ceilinged and spacious, decorated with huge mirrors, some good paintings, menorah with seven candlelights and gilded putti holding lamps. It's a large room and the space has been divided well by partitions and greenery. It's airy and open and despite the size of the room manages to be intimate enough, which is no mean feat. The occasional partition is made of glass, which led me to suspect that this is not so much for privacy, but rather so that you can see and be seen.

Prompted by this thought I looked briefly around a packed dining-room and saw about as much variation in the customers as I've ever seen in a restaurant. The only thing that I could assume they had in common was well-filled wallets, since La Stampa isn't cheap. My guest for the evening was an actress and writer, and something of a foodie. As a result our conversation turned almost exclusively on food and wine once we had exhausted the topic of the other diners. This was harder for me than her, since I had my back to the dining-room, but little by little she talked me through the room. There were tables that spanned three generations, young couples, business men in groups, retired couples - just about every possible permutation of age groups and stereotypes.

She chose fish soup to begin, which was served with croutons and saffron aioli, a rather nice idea, I thought. I had carpaccio, which was served with sliced parmesan. Or was it? It had none of the granular texture of parmesan although it tasted like it. It may have been an immature Grana Padana, or perhaps it had sat in a warm kitchen a little too long and had sweated.

It was around this point that I became aware that every time our pleasant waitress came to our table she used my left shoulder as a leaning post. I'm not the best at formality myself, but hey, we hadn't even been introduced. Still, it was quite endearing and I decided to take it as a compliment. Maybe I just look like a comfortable sort of person. Since my guest would drink no red wine, I ordered a bottle of Louis Latour's Macon Lugny, a solid, reliable wine that never disappoints. In La Stampa it sells for £22, which by any standards is steep. I have no problem with the usual restaurant mark-up of 100%, but as far as I could see 200% is closer to the mark on this list. The wine list is divided into the usual sections of regions by colour and the cheapest wine in each section is not less than £17 - for example a Muscadet Sur Lie. 'Premium Choice' house wines are £22 and even a humble Frascati costs £18. Can someone explain to me how a wine that costs less than £1.50 in the Frascati hills become £18 in Dawson Street?

For the main course I had cornfed chicken on a bed of mashed potato while my guest had a risotto. The risotto came with coriander, celery and wild mushrooms which once again turned out to be Horn of Plenty, which look like small, black trumpets. It's the third time I've found them on a plate in about as many weeks, which is remarkable since they're really not very common in the wild. My chicken was served exactly as described, although I'd have to take the cornfed bit on faith, since it tasted no different from any other chicken that I've eaten.

We shared a banana creme brulee to finish which was prettily presented with a raspberry coulis and piped chocolate flowers, served with coconut ice-cream. A pleasant enough end to an unremarkable meal. You will not, gastronomically speaking, get your socks knocked off at La Stampa, but you will pay £25 a head for the food and your wine will come to you at night-club prices.