Sometimes choices can be hard. I thought that it was about time that I explored the gastronomic hub of Monkstown, where on the Crescent a long line of restaurants lie almost side by side. I'd gone with my wife and we walked slowly along the road letting the gods decide for us - or so I thought. We stopped outside FXB's, which specialises in meat, and read their menu. 'Look,' I said, 'a sixteen-ounce T-bone steak. Imagine that, a pound of red meat on one plate. Mine, for example.' My wife looked at the menu silently. Then she spoke. 'Let's look at Wong's menu.'

Wong's is a few paces down the road, so we went to look at their menu. 'That looks good, doesn't it?' she asked. 'Yes,' I said, 'it does, but a T-bone steak is something that may not be around for much longer. If we ever have grandchildren they'll probably never know what meat on the bone is. We have a duty to refresh our memories, for their sake. And anyway, it's my review so I should get to choose.' We went into Wong's.

First impressions are of quiet class. Dark green walls and a dark green carpet; ebonised wood on the chairs, tables and incidental screens; restrained Chinese paintings and prints on the walls and some rather handsome urns. Not your typical cheap Chinese food emporium. It's a large space, but it's divided rather well into different seating areas, so if it's not particularly busy like the night we were there, you don't feel overwhelmed by empty tables. We sat down and were presented with menus, a wine list and a tray of prawn crackers. While Susie began studying the menu I checked the wine list, looking for a white wine that would please my wife. It's a fairly comprehensive list and begins with six house wines, three reds and three whites at £11.50 each. Four pages of reds and four of white follow, covering all the major wine-producing countries. They are well-chosen for the most part, with styles and prices to cover most tastes. The mark-up is over 100 pc, which I can see no excuse for. From the list I chose an Italian white, the Verdicchio, which is a good wine with a strong enough flavour to compete with spicy food. It was priced at £15. The menu is impossibly long with over one hundred dishes on offer from all the main regional cooking styles of China: Cantonese, Szechwan, Shanghai and Pekinese as well as a sweet and sour section, vegetarian and European. Faced with such an array of choices I went for the easy option and asked our waiter for his advice. We began with a plate of mixed starters at £5.50 each and took our waiter's recommendations for our main courses: Ying Yang king prawns and Szechuan Beef.

Our mixed starters arrived and consisted of two spicy spare ribs, two breaded prawns, two triangles of sesame toast and two spring rolls. The centre-piece of the platter was freestanding harp that had been cut from a turnip. It was beautifully done and was definitely the most memorable part of the starters. Not that they were in any way unpleasant; just rather forgettable.

The main courses arrived along with a dish of egg-fried rice. Susie's Ying and Yang prawns were presented on a platter which had a bowl of stir-fried prawns and vegetables and alongside that, prawns in a spicy, fruity sauce. I tried both and thought that the stir-fry was the better of the two. My Szechuan beef was hot and spicy, and was a generous portion of beef slivers served with stir-fried celery. Celery doesn't happen to be one of favourite vegetables, but the beef and the rice went very nicely together.

The service throughout was quick and efficient; so quick that there were times that I wondered if I was on a different time scale. I'd just become aware that our waiter was at the table and he'd be gone again, having done everything in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

The dessert menu arrived along with hot towels, which is a nice touch, especially if the food was hotter than you were prepared for. It was a bit like waking up on a long-haul flight. The dessert menu has a nice touch: there are photographs of the dishes on offer. Guided by our eyes we chose a lemon sorbet and a Terry's chocolate bombe. When they arrived it was obvious that they'd come from the depths of a deep-freeze and were almost certainly bought in. Both were so cold and so hard that they were unapproachable for a while. I'm old-fashioned in some things: I like a fork and a spoon for my dessert but here you get only a spoon. For the hard-frozen desserts a fork would have been really handy to hold them firmly while attemting to prise bits off with the spoon. I kept expecting my bombe to shoot off the plate under the pressure of my spoon, but thankfully it didn't happen.

I finished with an espresso and Susie had Chinese tea. I'm beginning to take the word 'espresso' with a pinch of salt. Not for the first time in recent weeks I was given a neat demi-tasse filled with something that was not entirely unlike an espresso, without actually being one. I'm a pedant; I actually believe that an espresso comes from an espresso machine. That means exactly the right temperature of water at exactly the right pressure going through good coffee grounds, and finally giving you a small amount of heavenly liquid with a light brown foam on top. The foam is the clue. It should be neither dark nor pale, and in a wellmade espresso it will support a spoonful of sugar for a moment before it sinks. When I eventually get one that matches this description, I'll let you know.

Our bill, including a 10pc service charge, came to £71.25 which is very much in the upper echelons of price, considering the wine was a modest £15. I would expect for this kind of money to have a meal that would be something of an occasion. What we got was acceptable but not exceptional, and in the case of the desserts, not up to scratch. Wong's has a sister restaurant in Ranelagh where I'm told I might have fared better, but for the moment that'll have to remain in the realm of speculation.