This time we were well-behaved; this time there was no second bottle of wine, no champagne as a chaser, no sitting up drinking cognac until very late. No, this time we were good journos who met early, ate early and went home early. The last time I reviewed a restaurant with Mary Finnegan I watched the dawn after a long night of eating, drinking and carousing, but this time it was a weekday outing and we were both under orders to be sensible grown-ups with an eye on the working day to follow.

I met Mary in her local in Dalkey, where after some discussion with the Monday Club - a loose agglomeration of Dalkey residents who have the sort of jobs that permit a Monday afternoon off - the consensus was that The Black Tulip Bistro was nearby and should provide us with a good meal. For those with long memories The Black Tulip is where Roly Saul used to be before moving to Ballsbridge and where even longer ago Johnny Robinson had Trudi's before he went to America. As it happens I'd eaten there earlier this year with Chris-the-brother-in-law after a long and assiduously sampled wine-tasting in the Merrion Hotel, so the only clear memories I had were that I'd enjoyed it and the feeling that I ought to go there again to review it. Kismet had closed the cycle.

It's on Dun Laoghaire's main street opposite the Bloomfield's building site and it's a long, narrow, high room that's been divided intelligently into eating areas. There's an upstairs which is like a gallery, overlooking the part just inside the door where the ceiling goes up two stories. There are nicely framed prints on the walls, and large tables covered in linen. There's also a counter which serves as a bar. The room is lit with down-lights and loads of candles, which I like. As the years go by I find the kindness of candle-light increasingly appealing. When the lights were dimmed later in the night the softness of the candle-light came into its own.

Since we were there on a Monday night, the restaurant was not full to capacity, which I how I like it - I have this theory that the service is better when a restaurant isn't stretched to capacity. And anyway, talking of Mondays, people who go out on Mondays aren't looking for the kind of manic mayhem that Friday and Saturday-nighters are, it's a different kind of buzz. Since we were the first to arrive, for once I didn't mind the background music, especially as this selection seemed designed to please refugees from the sixties - my God, there was a moment when we were actually singing along to Ike and Tina.

We sat down at our table and while Mary began looking through the menu I managed to try all three of the home-made breads on the table while checking the wine list. It's not a long list and it has no obvious bargains, but there are good wines to be had for less than £20. I chose a Chianti Classico that was described on the list as 'the perfect Chianti' but it seemed that a party of thirsty Swedes had finished the stocks the previous night so I wasn't able to taste perfection. Instead I chose a Rosso Conero, which was entirely unknown to me until last month in Italy when I ranked it first in a blind tasting of regional Italian wines. This one was called San Lorenzo, it was good and at £15.95 it meant we had a quality wine for average money.

With that choice made I was able to think about my food. The starters are all around the £5 mark and a few caught my eye: mussels in a filo basket with bacon and brie, a tian of goats' cheese, a risotto of peas and ham, and crabmeat with egg noodles. Mary chose a Caesar salad from the daily specials and I had the mussels in filo pastry. I was pleased to see them arrive on fine, large plates and both were nicely presented, especially mine since there's not a whole lot you can do to make a salad look amazing. Our waitress arrived with one of those pepper grinders that look like a monstrous Priapic phallus and offered us both a grind. I said no, since I prefer my mussels austere, but Mary had a sprinkle.

The main course prices range between £10 for the ravioli and £17 for the fillet of beef. Mary chose the noisettes of lamb on garlic croutons with a ragout of peppers and plum tomatoes and basil-flavoured mashed potato, while I chose the crab and basil ravioli served with a mixed salad dressed with pesto. Once again they looked good on the plate when they came, and once again the pepper phallus came out for a grind. It occurred to me that this is a way to encourage safe eating - always use a condiment. Mary's lamb was quite one of the nicest pieces of lamb I've tasted in a while, beautifully cooked and delicately flavoured. I thought that the idea of mash with basil a stroke of genius and was a little annoyed I hadn't thought of it myself first. My ravioli was not so successful, the pasta itself was too thick, making the ravioli dense and, I suspected, a little indigestible.

Mary came back from the ladies and told me that not only was it spotlessly clean, there were complete maintenance supplies to be found; lotions, scents, towels, tissues.... 'Beauty trowels?' I ventured. 'No,' said Mary, 'just standard tarting-up tools.' We looked at the dessert menu and settled on ice-cream for Mary and chocolate cheesecake for me. 'Oatcake ice-cream?' I said, 'remember how Dr. Johnson defined oats? A grain eaten by horses in England and by men in Scotland.' Actually despite my reservations on the eating of oats I liked it and Mary had to parry my preying fork a few times. We finished our meal with the wonderful Illy coffee, two glasses of late-bottled port, more chat and some rather fine close harmonies. The bill came to £66.20, which would place this meal more into a restaurant category than a bistro one. But in a way this is just semantics; the food in The Black Tulip Bistro is better than I'd expect to get in a bistro and the service was attentive and friendly. Perhaps it should be called The Black Tulip Restaurant, because if like me you expect a bistro to be cheap, you'd get a surprise.