Habit, they say, dulls the edge of pleasure. After a week in which three gourmet meals had featured, I had an overpowering urge for something simple, something plain. I haven't gone off haute cuisine by any means, but like anything else you need the occasional change from what is the norm. Red meat was on my mind; specifically a large steak. Like a pregnant woman with a notion, images of big steaks kept popping into my mind and I'd feel the saliva beginning to run. As the day wore on the size of the imagined steak grew, until it filled a plate, falling in gross vulgarity over its imaginary edge. And chips, and fried onion rings - aah, heaven.

Review day this week coincided with my daughter's seventeenth birthday, so I'd been sort of planning a family night out. She, however, had other ideas, so instead of dinner we had a birthday lunch in the Roundwood Inn. I tell you this because it had the effect of leaving me still feeling well-fed when it was time to go to dinner. But I wasn't going to let a little thing like lack of appetite deter me from my goal of an obscenely large steak.

Leaving Isabella off in Killiney to do her thing, my wife and I went on to the crescent in Monkstown, where there must be more restaurants per yard than anywhere else in Dublin. We parked and walked past a few of them. 'Ooh, look!' said Susie, 'here's a fish restaurant.' 'I know,' I said casually while walking purposefully onwards. 'Can't we go in here? Look, they've got all kinds of fish.' Now the last time Susie and I came to Monkstown we had a similar conversation and I gave in. This time, however, I was determined to be strong. 'No. The deal tonight is steak, not fish.' I led her a little reluctantly by the hand until we got to FXB's.

We hadn't booked, and although it was a mid-week night the restaurant was nearly full. Luckily we got a table, because Susie was already planning the fall-back plan if we couldn't. 'We can go to the fish restaurant,' she opined brightly. We sat down and were handed the bills of fare. The wine list is immensely pleasing; it's very reasonably marked up and there are good wines to be had for well under £15. You can have wines for under a tenner, but the best choices fell between £12 and £15 and were mostly New World. I've become very fond of the wines that Wolfgang Blass makes in Australia and they had his President's Show Reserve Cabernet on the list for a very modest £18.50. I've seen this on other lists priced at over £30 and have therefore chosen a less exalted wine from the same maker on those occasions. FXB's is a steak house, but the menu is reasonably broad. The starters include things like mixed leaf salad, blue cheese in filo pastry, breaded mushrooms, chicken liver pate, Caesar salad, chowder or lambs kidneys and are priced between £3 and £5. Apart from the main menu there was also a list of specials which offered deep-fried king prawns at £4.95, which seemed very reasonable, jalapeno peppers and tagliatelle. Susie chose the mixed leaf salad and I chose the liver pate.

Meat of all kinds figures largely on the menu, which is no surprise if you know that F.X. Buckley's was always one of Dublin's premier butchers. Main courses include char-grilled tuna steak, medallions of beef, supreme of chicken Piri Piri, stuffed chicken breast, duckling, medallions of pork and pan fried venison. All of these are served with a choice of spring onion mash, chips, baked potato, a side salad or rice. However I was here as a man with a mission, and there it was on the menu: char grilled free-range beef. You can even select the size of steak you want and pay by the ounce, £1.40 for the sirloin or £1.75 for the fillet. I toyed with the idea of a sixteen ounce steak very briefly before realising that I'd never be able for it, even with the days of anticipation behind me. Still, the ten-ouncer on the menu looked more than tempting so I chose that. There were a number of fish dishes on offer, salmon steak, black sole on the bone or the catch of day, which was ray's wing. 'And what fish for you, darling?' I asked. 'An eight-ounce fillet steak for me,' came the reply. Talk about Pauline conversions.

Once we'd ordered and had begun sipping the Wolf Blass it was time to take in the surroundings. The first thing I noticed was the chairs, since mine in particular seemed determined to cut off the circulation in the back of my legs. I spent a lot of this evening squirming on the chair in a vain attempt to find comfort. There's plenty of wood and stone-work around, and there's a high atrium in between the upper and lower dining-rooms under which is a small lounge area. It's a pleasing room, but like the chairs, doesn't seem designed to make you linger.

Our very pleasant and efficient waitress brought the starters. My pate was pretty much as you'd expect it to be, but Susie found the creamy cheese sauce on her salad a little too thick for her liking. Our main courses came and fulfilled my two-day long dream. Big, tender steaks, cooked exactly as we'd asked for them, in Susie's case very rare and in mine, blue. A near-raw steak is as good a test for tenderness as you can find, and mine passed no bother. In the end the chips and onion ring part of my fantasy never came to pass, as I really could only manage the meat. You won't be surprised to read that neither of us could eat a dessert either.

Unusually at this stage of the meal the bottle of Wolf Blass still had wine in it, and we savoured it, since it had now been open for well over an hour and had come into its own. I finished with an espresso, which was good enough and took the bill. Including the wine at £18.50 it came to £57.55, or under £20 a head for the food. But I have to state the obvious here; when I'm in a steak-house I'm not looking for gourmet food, and I'd be very surprised if I found it. What you want in a place like this is value for money, plain, unpretentious food and decent wine at reasonable prices - which is exactly what I got in FXB's. Only one whinge, a litre of mineral water billed at £3.95, which is too much.