It had to happen sooner or later. Go to enough restaurants and it's bound to. There will come a day when you'll be presented with a bad meal. I'd been wondering how I'd deal with it when it came, since by nature I'm not severe and I know from my own experience just how hard it is to make a restaurant work. There are two points I want to make here at the outset and they're these: a review of a restaurant is like a snapshot of a single meal - it may or may not be representative of what the restaurant can do most of the time - and the other is that I'd prefer if possible to let a restaurant settle in after opening before reviewing it.

A couple of days earlier I'd read an article by Adrian Gill of the Sunday Times about a tiff he'd been having with Gordon Ramsay, a London restaurateur. He made the point that critics are sometimes believed to have the power to make or break a restaurant. This is clearly a nonsense, and he goes on to say 'We (critics) simply tell our readers what a particular meal was like on a particular night. Restaurants are successes or failures solely on the quality of their hospitality and their value.' What happened the night we went to 'The Quay's Bistro' is an object lesson in the desire to please being completely swamped by inexperience.

It's a new restaurant, open only two weeks or so when we went there, and it's in a great spot overlooking the river in Wicklow town. No one would be happier than me to find another good place to eat in my own back yard, so I went with high expectations. So did my guest Susan Morley, who hasn't accompanied me for a while and who loves sea-food. The dining room is rectangular and one side is made up of three large window bays that lead onto a wooden veranda with a view of the river. The other long wall is dominated by a large sail-fish which can be found in logo form on both the menu and wine list. The colours are pleasing, but the lighting gives a flat, diffuse light that is somehow unrestful.

There are simple, square tables and chairs to match with a sort of functional, Scandinavian look. Although the furniture is plain, the cutlery and the glass-ware have been well chosen and the tables are big enough to be comfortable at. As soon as we sat down we were brought menus, a wine list, a little ramekin of black olives that were stuffed with pimento, and then we were brought a selection of good breads. The menu is quite short and the wine list is even shorter, less than twenty wines with two house wines listed at just under £10. Although it's specifically a sea-food bistro there's chicken and steak on the menu for committed carnivores. For wine I ordered an Italian Verdicchio which turned out to be unavailable and so I went for a Pinot Grigio from the Friuli which was good value at £13.50, and we had a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water as well. The wine was brought to the table already opened and we were brought no cooler or ice-bucket for it - nothing major, but none the less notable.

The starters are all around the £5 mark and Susie chose the platter of smoked salmon and smoked swordfish while I picked the cracked crab claws. It was around this time that the restaurant started to fill up and the two waitresses began to find themselves more than a little stretched. Our starters arrived and Susie's platter looked and tasted good. My cracked crab claws looked as though someone had smacked them haphazardly with a hammer, some a lot and some not at all, but they came with a nutcracker, a two-pronged fork and a finger bowl, so I went to work - spraying garlic butter about as I did so. Unfortunately the two-pronged fork was less than useless since the claws were so over-cooked that they'd turned to powder and no amount of poking could get me a mouthful. I did something I've only done once before and asked the waitress for something in its place. Mussels were off, so I chose the Guinness and oyster chowder. Why it should have taken a further twenty minutes for a bowl of soup to arrive I'm not sure, but when it did come it was good.

At this point, despite these minor upsets, I was still happy enough. I've always made a point in these reviews of giving a restaurant an opportunity of putting something right in the event of something going wrong, and if it's done properly the second time I don't even mention it in the review. But from here on inexperience seemed to take over. Susie had chosen linguine (sic) with a lobster and prawn sauce as a main course and I'd gone for the seared scallops. Mine was a disappointing dish, insipid and flavourless, but Susie's was actually unpleasant and she didn't eat it. I could bore you with details as to why, but it's enough to say that when pasta is cooked without salt - even if the sauce were good - the result would be unpalatable. Yet even at this point had someone come to our table to ask were we happy with the food, there was still an opportunity to put things right. However no one came near us, and only after my second cigarette were the plates removed wordlessly with no query as to why the food was all still on the plate.

We had no wine left and I thought a half bottle might do nicely to revive Susie's flagging enthusiasm, but there being none to be had we had a glass each of the acceptable house wine. Desserts were offered and Susie declined, declaring 'I really can't eat any more.' I picked the blueberry clafouti which, when it came, was a flat flan that did little to excite the taste buds. Two espressos - when will people learn it's not expresso? - finished the meal. We joined a table of friends and even then, with only one other table left lingering, it was hard to get served.

It's very possible that 'The Quay's' will find its feet and it's my sincere wish that it does, but the bottom line is that when a meal costs this much - Susie's plate of pasta alone was £14.50, priced right up there with the best of them - this kind of amateur night is unforgivable. The bill came to £63.75 excluding service, from which the cost of the crab claws had been deducted. That meant we'd paid over £42 for just two courses each.