There are times when despite our best intentions, things just don't turn out as planned. Some weeks ago I took Gill Hall, the textile designer, out to dinner and although we had fun, it didn't turn out to be quite the meal I'd wanted. I promised her that we'd do it again and that this time she could expect a fabulous gourmet evening where nothing would go wrong. Gill is a vegetarian who also eats fish - a piscatarian? - so I'd thought of either a drive to Howth to the King Sitric, or Restaurant Na Mara in Dun Laoghaire where we could do the fish thing properly.

I arrived at her house to find Gill ready, but with a problem. The babysitter couldn't come, which meant she couldn't leave home. We sat in her kitchen looking out at a sunny evening. We pondered silently. Suddenly Gill jumped from her chair. 'Wait! I have it!' She went to her cork board and pulled out a brochure with 'Restaurant Express' written on it. 'Look,' she said, 'we can order a meal from a whole long list of restaurants and eat it here. I've even got wine in the fridge.' For a brief moment things were looking up until we realised that Gill lives outside the area that Restaurant Express deliver to. We pondered some more. I looked idly through the brochure and read about the Ayumi Ya Japanese restaurant in Baggot Street. 'Looks nice,' I said, reading out a dish or two. And that's when Gill had her brain-wave. There is another Ayumi Ya that is a stone's throw from her house, and they do take-aways. With the brochure as a guide she phoned in our order and was told that it would be ready in thirty to forty minutes, which was perfect, since it meant we could watch the wedding episode of 'Friends' first.

The Ayumi Ya has a big plus when it comes to take-aways: there is a Vintage off-license right next to it so you can collect your food and your wine with one stop. Inside the restaurant there's a waiting area that's separated from the dining room by a corridor, where there are seats and a coffee table scattered with Japanese magazines for the curious. I was told that there would be a short wait for our order so I was grateful for the reading matter provided, although all I could do was look at the pictures.

Gill is something of an aficionado of Japanese food, so I'd left the ordering entirely to her. I really had no idea what I was picking up in the cardboard-topped foil boxes that were handed to me. Still, I went next door into the offlicense and picked out a half bottle of Brown Brothers dessert wine and a bottle of Montrachet, on the assumption that fish was going to figure somewhere in the boxes. By the time I got back to Gill's house the kitchen table was laid and we were ready to start unpacking. Norimaki, little rice rolls wrapped up in Nori seaweed were our starters. We had three varieties and six of each: Salmon Maki, Oshinko Maki which is stuffed with pickles, and Kappa Maki which is with cucumber and sesame seeds. I tasted one straight from the container and discovered that this is not the way to do it. By themselves they taste interesting, but have a dry texture. What you do, Gill explained, is use the dips. The Norimaki comes with ginger pickle and Wasabi mustard but we also had three pots of dips. She poured the soy dip onto a plate, added the Wasabi mustard - which had a horseradish taste - and the pickled ginger. You then dip each mouthful-

sized piece of Norimaki into it and then eat: the combination of flavours was remarkable. The Wasabi mustard disappeared quickly, but Gill produced a tube of it from her kitchen cupboard along with a bottle of Kikkoman Soy sauce in case we ran out, thus demonstrating that she takes her Japanese food seriously. The Ayumi Ya had provided us chopsticks as well, but after dropping my dipped Norimaki a couple of times onto the silk table cloth, I reverted to European and used a fork while envying Gill her elegance with the chopsticks.

She had chosen deep fried Tofu for her main course, which came with bean sprouts and vegetables, and Tonkatsu - deep fried pork - for me, which also came with vegetables. There is a note on the menu in the Ayumi Ya which explains that deep fried dishes are not at their best when taken away, since the coating will never be as crisp as when it's straight from the pan. Yet despite this caveat, both tasted very good indeed, although as a carnivore I enjoyed my pork rather more than the tofu. Included in our foil boxes were a green salad and a mushroom dish - Panko-Age - which is deep fried mushrooms in tempura batter served with umeboshi, a salted plum paste. Again, these are combinations of tastes that are unusual to the European palate, and all the more exciting for that. As well as all of the above we also had a container of fried rice, which even when tepid tasted superb.

I've eaten in the Ayumi Ya a couple of times and have always enjoyed it. It has a comfortable dining room and there's attentive service. But there's something else that makes it worthwhile. A palate can become jaded when endlessly confronted with the same kinds of food. New flavours and combinations of textures are refreshing simply because of their newness, and the richness, sophistication and variety of Japanese cuisine makes it a good choice for the experimental diner. The joy of the Japanese way of eating, that is having lots of small dishes of different things, makes it ideal for this kind of experimentation.

We did go a little overboard on the quantities of food that we'd ordered, so much so that the restaurant assumed the meal was for four and gave us four sets of chopsticks. And the fact is that it probably would have fed four - it certainly gave Gill lunch the following day. Even so, for all that food, the bill came to £32.45. We finished our meal appropriately enough with Japanese green tea.

Obviously this sort of evening isn't the same as going to the restaurant: there's the washing-up for a start. But there may be times when dining in may be forced upon you, and in that case a foray to the Ayumi Ya will turn it into a pleasure.