There's no doubt about it, trying to combine a restaurant review with a night out is hard. The trouble is that to write a foodie-type review you have to be aware of every morsel of food that crosses your lips; each mouthful should be analysed for flavour, each dish scrutinised for presentation. Wine is there to be tasted intelligently and its particular properties noted for later description. All of which is informative as long as the food is the only thing that is of interest. But if you get too involved in a lively conversation the food comes and goes and you realise you weren't paying as much attention to it as you should have. Perhaps this isn't a bad thing - it occurs to me that we don't always end up in restaurants for a gastronomic experience. Sometimes we're there simply to enjoy ourselves and sometimes simply to assuage hunger. In these situations as long as nothing unpleasant ends up before you, the meal is a pleasure because the evening is.

The start of this week was busy. Monday was rehearsal for a small video on manners and etiquette, and Tuesday was the shoot. One of my erstwhile dining companions, Jeananne Crowley, was the writer and director, and its principal protagonist was Margot Bellew, Ireland's Ms. Manners. So Tuesday morning began with the proverbial early start. We assembled in the Merrion Hotel at quarter to eight where four actors were to demonstrate the right and the wrong way to behave over dinner. The Merrion had kindly given us a suite in which to film this mini epic and the day was given over to its doing. Jonathan White and Patricia Devine played the young couple, Kate O'Toole and myself the only very slightly older couple. By the end of the day Aunty Margot had our manners and etiquette honed almost to the point of perfection.

After twelve hours of filming we were done, and as is traditional at the end of a shoot, we thought about having a mini rap party. It happened that this was the same night that the Shelbourne's restaurant, Number 27, was celebrating its first anniversary with a big party, so that seemed like a good starting place for our night's revels. The room was stuffed to capacity with greater and lesser celebs, and Declan Saunders, the manager, seemed at pains to ensure that all his guests had as much champagne and lobster as they could fit. So, as is the way of these things, by ten o'clock our little group of revellers had lost a few and gained a few others. Under the masterful direction of John Stephenson five of us; Jeananne, Patricia, Kate, Rebecca and me, followed him to The Chilli Club in Anne's Lane.

The champagne had made us happy, hungry and perhaps a little raucous. When I had a restaurant I used to hate people arriving late, but in the Chilli Club we were made to feel welcome and although we had no reservation, they sat us down at a temporary placing until they'd set up a table of six for us. It's not a large dining room; perhaps ten tables, but they're big enough to be comfortable at and they were set with what I now assume must be traditional Thai cutlery, gold-coloured brass with a bamboo pattern - this is the fourth Thai restaurant I've seen it in. Maybe it was a reaction to a full day of playing perfect table manners, but I seem to remember that we were noisy, unruly and heedless of others in the restaurant - but then again by the time we were onto our main courses most of them had gone. God, it was fun. While we looked down the menu a new word game emerged. The Thai names for the dishes all seem to be made up of a string of single syllables, many of which turn up more than once. Here's a selection of them: bhang, lay, hed, prik, cum, nao, yum, Khow Phat. Even a drunken imagination can arrange these into all kinds of interesting phrases and it kept us amused for ages - even before we thought of adding other single syllable, Anglo-Saxon words to the list. Thankfully Kate, who was sitting on my right, kept me focused on the task in hand.

Once we'd exhausted the possibilities inherent in the game we chose a spicy chicken Satay, deep-fried prawns and a Chilli Club Selection for starters. All the starters are under £5 except for the Chilli Club selection which is almost a tenner, but which includes a taste of all the starters plus some that aren't on the menu. Chicken and prawn dishes predominate on the menu and they come in a large variety of ways. When our starters arrived, they were placed in the centre of the table and we all picked and mixed.

We ordered a bottle each of the house red and white which were perfectly acceptable and settled into our starters. The Satay was very nicely spiced; the spring rolls crisp with a light batter, and the Club Selection was generous - so much so that the equivalent of four starters fed six with ease. We did much the same for main courses, which are all under a tenner with the exception of the duck at £11, ordering a vegetable dish, pork, prawn and beef. I'm looking down the bill at the moment which has entries on it like Gung Hum Pa, Sen Mee Pau Khai, Gaeng Pet Peu, and I'm sorry to tell you I have absolutely no recollection what dishes they refer to, although I think the Gaeng Pet Peu might have been the duck that Kate had. I tasted most of what was on the table and found the dishes to be well-flavoured and well-balanced. The last Thai meal I had was a couple of months ago in London in the Busabong Too, which was good, but this was more to my taste - chef Fupot Boonchouy has a sure touch. It's also entirely possible that the convivial company may have helped to form this opinion.

Desserts are all £3.25 and three were ordered. I only tasted Kate's which was a little handkerchief of pastry with a very tasty filling which she described as 'hitting the motherload.' Before moving on elsewhere to continue our revelry we finished with coffee. The total bill, including the wine, came to just over £20 a head, which seemed very reasonable for the quality of food we'd eaten. All in all, a very enjoyable night.