A few weeks ago I went to lunch in the Indian restaurant in Ballsbridge called Chandni. I took my mother and my friend Antonio Breschi, the Italian pianist and composer, which meant that we could all speak the same language. At the time I thought it might be nice to pick another ethnic restaurant in the same area and compare the lunches. Today I put that plan into action and set off for the Moroccan restaurant that I remembered being just across the road from the Indian one.

Just occasionally, in this essentially malevolent universe, things go unexpectedly right for no discernible reason. My wife and I arrived at the door of the restaurant to find that it was now Cuban and that the Marrakesh had moved to South Anne's Street. Yes, I know, I should do my home-work more thoroughly, but Cuban did fit my plan of ethnic eating, the Pope was visiting there and anyway, I'd found a parking place.

A flight of stairs leads you up to Bella Cuba's small, but comfortable dining-room. We were met by a charming lady who turned out to be Ukrainian but who had spent eleven years in Cuba, which I can't help feeling says something about Dublin's increasing cosmopolitanism. The lunch menu is £8.90 and for this you choose any three courses from four on offer - starter, pasta, main course and dessert. It's occasionally been my experience that the best part of the food in a restaurant is reading about it on the menu, which doubles the disappointment when the food actually arrives. Here it's the other way round. The simple descriptions of the dishes don't give you a clue as to the delights in store.

The wine list is short, but well-chosen. There are two reds and two whites for under a tenner and some good quality South African and Chilean wines in the £15 to £20 bracket. We settled on a Provencale rose at £10.95 which was good for the price. For starters my wife chose the black bean salad and I chose the guacamole. The guacamole was served on a bed of salad and garnished with sweet potato chips. Until today I thought that I made a good guacamole, but now I know better - this was a delight. While I enthused over my starter, my wife was ecstatic with her bean salad. Served like mine on a salad bed, the beans were mixed with avocado and flavoured with garlic, lemon juice and chilli.

For main courses we had char-grilled chicken breast and pork with Cuban sauce. Both of these dishes were exceptional, which brings me to another hobby-horse of mine. For me, flavours are like colours: mix them well and you can get a new colour - mix them without skill and you get muddy brown. The Cuban chef here has that great gift of mixing his flavours to perfection and he knows exactly how to use salt - which is harder than you'd think. The clarity and the precision of the flavouring put this meal on a par with some of the best that I've eaten. Excellent desserts, coconut pudding and tropical fruit slices with ice-cream, made every part of this meal memorable - an event that I encounter far more rarely than I'd like.

What the Chandni and the Bella Cuba have in common is that both offer a three-course lunch for under a tenner, you sit at linen-covered tables and are served professionally. I could also suggest that neither of them has as many customers as they deserve, but I'm selfishly hesitant to do so because up to now I've never had a problem getting a table for lunch in the Chandni.

There are two floors in the Chandni, although only the downstairs is used for lunch. It's an open, airy room with a high ceiling with lots of polished brass, mahogany-coloured wood and a rather handsome marble floor. The tables are set with linen and good cutlery and it feels classier than the set-price lunch of £7.95 would lead you to believe. It's fully licensed, which means you can drink beer with your Indian meal, which is what I always do.

As soon as you sit down you are given a basket of poppadums which you can pick on while choosing. There are six starters, eight vegetarian dishes, ten main courses and five desserts, although only three were available on the day. For starters Antonio chose the hot chicken tikka, my mother the fried prawns, and I had the onion bhajias. Again, similar to the Cuban food, the flavours of these dishes are distinct, which means that you either like it or you don't; you won't be indifferent.

For main courses we chose chicken Masala, which is slightly hot, Kadhai gosht, which is a hotter lamb dish, and chicken Makhni which is cubed and served with a tomato sauce. Main courses in the Chandni are brought to the table on stainless steel flats which are placed on warmers, allowing you to take a little at a time while the rest stays hot. It also allows you to taste everyone else's choice easily. Pulao rice comes with all the main courses, which is perfect for soaking up the different sauces - as is the naan bread which is served fresh and hot.

By the time we'd finished the main courses neither Antonio or I were up to a dessert, probably because of the amount of bread and rice we'd eaten. My mother, who had eaten considerably less, gamely tried the Gulab Jamun, which is cottage cheese dumplings steeped in sugar syrup. Desserts don't seem to be the strong point of Indian cooking, and having tasted it I'll just say that this was not in the same league as the other dishes we'd eaten. We finished with filter coffee, which is also included in the price. For the three of us, including our beers and a glass of wine for mother, the bill came to £34.80.

I haven't actually checked it, but I'd surprised if you could have three courses and coffee in a franchised fastfood outlet for less than £8 or £9, which makes both of these restaurants remarkable value for money. But more important than the value for money, the food is of really good quality. Both of these kitchens make little use of dairy products, so there is a lightness to the food. I left both of the tables feeling well-fed but not replete, which is just as it should be.