I got a letter recently from a reader who asked me this simple question: how can your review be indicative of what anyone can expect in a restaurant if the staff recognise you as a reviewer? It's a fair point, and I had to think about it. I rarely book, but if I do it's in the name of my companion, consequently there's no advance warning of my arrival. That means that the menu is what it would normally be, the waiting staff are the ones who would have been there anyway and the same goes for the kitchen staff. Okay, if they recognise me from the postage stamp sized photo above once I arrive they might try a little harder to please, but think about this; what if the places where I've had poor service or bad food were places where I was recognised? What if that was them doing their best? You might reasonably assume that it could have been even worse if a bad review in a national newspaper wasn't a possibility.

Anyway, I felt it was time to go further afield than Dublin. I'd been told about a newish restaurant in Naas called the Fig Tree and my wife had no objection to the drive, so off we went. It's on the main road leading into Naas from Dublin and is on a corner. It looks from the outside as though it may have been an artisan cottage - single story with a central door and a window on either side. The windows have a few of those bull's eye glasses, giving the place a look of contrived 'olde worlde'. Inside, however, this impression evaporates. There's a comfortable but small seating area just inside the door with a counter on the left. The dining rooms lead on from here, rather like a railway carriage, very long and thin. We were led through one small dining room, past what I assumed were the kitchens, and into a room at the far end of the building. It had a open fire blazing in a brick surround, a tongue and groove ceiling with a wood and brass fan, a tongue and groove dado and some brass sconces on the walls. The walls glowed with a warm brick-red paint and a print of Toulouse Lautrec hung above the mantle. Large linen-covered tables with good cutlery, crockery and fine glassware completed the room.

As soon as we sat down we were brought a jug of iced water and some home-made bread. Then came the menus and wine list. The wine list is reasonably long, about sixty wines, and they're well-spaced across the price-range, the majority of them in the £13-20 range. There's another group of good wines in the £30-50 range, some half bottles and dessert wines, and house wines for £10.50. Susie decided that she wanted white wine, so just for a change I chose a sparkler, a Henri Grandin Brut Traditionelle at £20. It was new to me, but I reasoned that if it was halfway good then it wasn't expensive. It turned out to be as good as a Champagne at twice the price and came to us with lovely long-stemmed tulip glasses which had a strawberry in each. It's not something I'd always want with a glass of bubbly, but every now and then it makes a nice change.

The menu is simple and quite short. The starters are all around £5 and included Caesar salad, melon with fresh fruit, soup, pan-fried prawns and baked aubergine. Susie chose the prawns and I had the Caesar salad. Well actually it wasn't the classic Caesar salad, but then on the menu it was described as 'Caesar Salad Fig Tree-style' or words to that efffect. I like this kind of precision on a menu; nothing makes me crosser than a menu listing a classic dish that turns out to be something else. The Fig Tree has the right idea: if it's not the classic dish, then call it something else. Susie's prawns were big and fat and were served, covered in a tasty tomato sauce, in little blind pastry baskets. A great value starter for a fiver.

Main courses included a roast half duck, baked fillet of pork, roast rack of lamb, chicken Valentino, pan-fried fillet of beef and monkfish Wellington, all priced in and around £15. Susie chose the monkfish and I chose the pork. All the while we'd been there the service had been attentive and professional. Our wine glasses were kept topped up as were our water glasses, the cutlery was changed according to our choices, my ashtray was never left unchanged - although when I'm dining with Susie I smoke less than usual since she dislikes it and makes little noises of annoyance when I light up.

The main course arrived and we took stock. Susie's monkfish Wellington was wrapped in pancakes rather than pastry as the name might have suggested - but it was like the starter; it was described on the menu as wrapped in pancakes, which meant we got no surprises. Portions in the Fig Tree are large, which suits me fine, and it was true of our main courses. Susie had two large pieces of monkfish, very slightly over-cooked for my taste, wrapped in thick pancakes. It was served with a sauce of shrimps and crab meat. I must have had close on half a pork steak on my plate, nicely cooked and with a taste I haven't had since I last ate organic pork. It had a slightly gamy taste reminiscent of real meat, instead of the bland tastelessness of battery pork. What we had was good, well-prepared food without any great finesse, and it was generously abundant.

We finished the meal with a home-made ice-cream between us, pineapple and kiwi. We had to wait a bit for it to soften, but that's the thing with real ice-cream, it goes hard at temperatures where commercial stuff stays soft. It was surrounded with red berries and a concentrated pineapple juice. We had coffees with the dessert, Susie choosing an decaffeinated coffee and me choosing an espresso. This turned out to be one of the better espressos I've had, and would have been perfect had it had half the amount of water.

As we lingered before paying the bill we were presented with a plate of petits fours, obviously home-made and rather nice. They seemed to me a good example of what The Fig Tree provides: good, honest food without too much emphasis on presentation. In Italy it would be described as 'genuine', which, when it comes to food, is about as good an epithet as you can find. The bill came to £68 without a service charge, so I was happy to add a tip.