It has to be something to do with living in Dalkey - there's a pattern here. Three of my past dinner companions have been Dalkey residents and all of them, when asked where they'd like to go to eat, suggested Dalkey restaurants. It may be some kind of village Chauvinism, or possibly it's no more than a desire to do as little driving as possible. Anyway, once again I was having dinner with a Dalkey resident, Chris de Burgh, who also just happens to be my brother-in-law. Our wives are sisters, which gives us plenty to talk about, even though we were friends long before either of us were married. On the evening of our night out, both sisters found themselves irrevocably elsewhere, so in the end it was just Chris and me. True to form, he suggested a couple of Dalkey restaurants, but I managed to push him further afield - all the way to Sandycove, in fact. Must be at least a mile and a half from Dalkey.

We were going to a restaurant that he's always liked, and when I come to think about it, the last time I was there was with him. It's called Odells and it's on the first floor of a building opposite Fitzgerald's pub in Sandycove. One of the joys of suburban dining became immediately apparent, as we were able to park right outside the door. At the top of a flight of stairs there's a bar cum reception area in the return of the building. We didn't stop there though, but went directly to our table in the dining room. We were sat at a corner table by a window with a view of the main street and looked in the other direction out onto a smallish square room with a gabled ceiling from which two brass and wood fans are suspended. The room has a musical motif: there are posters of musicians and there are musical instruments as well mounted on the walls. Main-stream jazz was playing as background music when we sat down. The chairs are bentwood with a modicum of padding and the tables are large enough for comfort. It's a pleasing enough room, simple and a little utilitarian.

Chris is an avid oenophile, so he went to work almost at once on the wine list. It's an average length list - about forty wines - and they're fairly well spread across both the price range and countries of origin. Finally he settled upon a half bottle of Chablis at £10.25 to start, and a bottle of the Concha y Toro Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon at £14.25 for our main courses. A bottle of mineral water completed our drinks order. With the important choice of the wines sorted it was time to do the menu. Apart from soup at £2.95 the starters are all around the £5 mark. They include things like charcoal grilled tandoori chicken, baked mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes, fresh fish, wild Atlantic mussels and sauteed lambs' kidneys. The main courses are all between £12 and £15 and include fillet of pork, fillet of beef, Barbary duck breast, medallions of chicken, roast pheasant and panfried medallions of venison.

Chris was unable to make up his mind between the tandoori chicken and the stuffed mushrooms for his starter and so intelligently ordered both. I'm a sucker for lamb's kidneys, so I ordered them. We had by this stage noticed that the service was extremely attentive and for a brief moment the thought occurred to me that perhaps my reputation had gone before me. Then I realised the truth; it wasn't my presence at all - go anywhere with C de B and you're likely to get star treatment. We had two young and attractive waitresses looking after us, which for two middle-aged men dining alone makes a pleasant distraction. Chris asked one girl her name and it turned out to be Pogul, Irish for 'kissable' apparently - very apt.

Three starters were placed before us and we began to taste a little of each. The kidneys were well-cooked and the sauce was delicious, so much so that I had to order more bread to mop up what remained of it in the dish. I liked the Tandoori chicken as well, but was a little unenthusiastic about the mushrooms. I can't help feeling that no matter what you do to cultivated button mushrooms the result is always going to be a bit bland, because the mushrooms themselves are. We started to taste our red wine and poured it to let it breath in the glasses. Chilean wines are rather good, and the Concha y Toro is a good wine for less than £15. You'd be hard put to find a French red of this quality for this kind of money.

Chris had ordered the fillet of beef for his main course and I'd chosen the venison. Venison is not an easy meat to cook; it's virtually fat-free, which means it can dry up easily when cooked, and if it's not well prepared it can have all kinds of off flavours when cooked. I got three large medallions that had been cooked medium rare and which, although recognisable as venison, had none of that high, gamy flavour that people so often pay lip service to. I'm increasingly convinced that except for a few die-hards, for most people game is at its best when it's not high. My venison was tender, tasty and nicely presented - a real autumn treat. Chris's beef was just as good, but I thought the venison was the star dish.

Desserts are all priced at £3.25 and include chocolate and peanut pie, marbled chocolate cheesecake, passion fruit pie and Chris's favourite, home-made meringues with a strawberry sauce, which is what he picked. I chose the chocolate and peanut pie, and although I'm not usually tempted by desserts I enjoyed this one. It came with ice-cream and chocolate sauce and was served on a biscuit base. The meringues came stacked high and pleased Chris because their consistency was exactly to his taste. 'They're really good,' he said, 'nearly as good as my mum's.' We decided on two glasses of Beaumes de Venise to accompany our desserts, which sell for £2.80 a glass, cheaper than I've seen it anywhere else. If we had hadn't been greedy and had had two rather than three starters, our food bill would have come to £43, or just over £20 a head. That puts Odells right in the main stream of pricing, but with better than average food.