Bray sea front must be one of the last remaining anachronisms in the greater Dublin area. The houses that line the esplanade have the same kind of weather-beaten grandeur that you can find in any Victorian resort like Torquay or Bognor. There's the obligatory Stella Maris, an Esplanade Hotel, arcades and the Palace Bingo, all of which makes me think the town ought to be renamed Bray-Super-Mare. When I first knew it, it had the kind of seediness that only once popular resorts past their prime can have. Today it shows all the signs of having benefitted hugely from the largesse of the German taxpayer.

We drove to Bray on a night when small flurries of snow made us a little apprehensive about the return journey. As we parked on the sea-front there was a deep roar from the sea as huge breakers burst onto the beach while a wild wind whipped up debris and dust. Shelter from the storm awaited across the road in The Tree of Idleness, which takes up the garden level of one the large Victorian sea-front houses. Years ago when I had a restaurant, I used to come here on a rare night off. Akis, a Greek Cypriot, used to fill it with his large personality. He was a big, bearded Mediterranean who loved life and food - hard to see what we had in common really. Sadly he died, but his wife Susan now runs the restaurant.

The name 'The Tree of Idleness' comes from a tree named by Lawrence Durrell in his book 'Bitter Lemons', which stood in the garden of Akis and Susan's restaurant in Cyprus. When the Turkish invasion came, they left Cyprus and brought the name to Bray. I love the name; it's redolent of sun, wine and indolence. Inside the front door there is a bar and a welcoming open fire. An archway leads from here to the first of two rooms which form the dining area. The decor is simple and plain; the walls are hung with paintings and photographs that are for sale, and the tables are well-spaced and set with white linen. If you enjoy wine-lists be prepared to spend some time on this one. The first half of it contains all the usual wines you'd expect to find these days where a restaurant takes its wines seriously: good provincial French wines, Italian, New World and of course Greek. But the real joy is the second half of the list where the great clarets are to be found.

In a way it's a bit like window shopping - although the list prices are in many cases less than the wines would fetch at auction - they're still in the hundreds rather than the tens. I know of no other restaurant list that has so many of the older great vintages; there are '45s, '49s, '55s, '61s '66s and '70s as well as lesser intervening vintages. A few representative examples: Cos d'Estournel 1945 is priced at £315, Ausone 1949 £320, Chateau Margaux 1955 £275, Mouton Rothschild 1970 £189. I realise that there is something slightly perverse about saying that £300 for a bottle of wine is cheap, but if you really wanted to buy one of these wines you'd be lucky to find them at these prices on the open market - which would explain why Susan told me that she hates selling them.

Coming back to earth from these giddy heights of oenology I settled on a bottle of the Gran Coronas Reserva from Torres, a big, beefy Spanish wine that I love. Unfortunately it was out of stock, so I went native instead and had a bottle of the Sicilian Ciro. It arrived at the table at a very cool cellar temperature so it was a while before we could drink it, but when we did it had a complexity of flavour you don't often get from ripe, southern grapes.

The menu, as you might expect, has plenty of Greek dishes for those with an ethnic bent. But if the mood doesn't take you for Greek food, there's plenty of international dishes to choose from. I saw one of my favourite starters, lambs' kidneys and sweetbreads in mustard sauce. Unfortunately the sweetbreads weren't available, but kidneys by themselves suit me very nicely. My wife chose a sea-food starter which turned out to be very good - prawns, white fish and smoked fish in a saffron sauce served with grilled aubergine slices. My starter was not good; firstly I prefer to find my kidneys halved rather than chopped up small since there's more control on how they're cooked; but there was a bigger problem. Mixed among the kidneys was a bad one - one that was probably bruised -and it had imparted an awful taste to the dish.

This is the first time that I've ever had a bad dish in The Tree of Idleness, but it brings me to something that as an ex-restaurateur I feel strongly about. If you ever get something served to you that isn't right, you really should tell your waiter then and there. Don't suffer in silence and then go and bad-mouth the place; give the restaurant a chance to put it right. I did as I preach and told our waiter who offered to replace the dish. As it happened I wasn't hungry enough to start again so I declined, preferring to go straight to my main course. The point is that any restaurant kitchen is prone to error on occasion and the odd mistake says little in itself, especially if things are rectified quickly and with no fuss. What is unfortunate about this is that when I checked through my bill just now I find I was charged for the kidneys. Somewhere there's been a breakdown in communication: a bad dish can accidentally get onto a plate, but it really shouldn't get onto the bill.

The main courses we had chosen were quail for my wife and pan-fried monkfish for me. Mine was a generous plateful of well-cooked pieces of fish, but it was a little shy on flavour. My wife's quail on the other hand was a superb dish of two boned quail served on a bed of a potato and apple cake with a honey sauce. The sauce was caramelised on the birds, which had a stuffing that was flavoured with walnuts and raisins. The vegetables were served on side dishes and were plain and simple; leeks, broccoli and potatoes.

The bill, for two starters, two main courses and drinks came to £66.90. Shortly I'll be reviewing Trumans in Kildare Street where a four course dinner and drinks for two came to £66.50, which inevitably raises the question of value for money.