There I was reading an article in the Sunday Times by India Knight and when I got to the end of it I noticed her email address. And as I looked through the paper I saw that all the journalists now have their email addresses at the end of their articles. Since mine's been at the top of this column for a year and a half now, it's nice to see that the other papers are finally catching up. It does have its advantages - occasionally I get emails from people with good news to share. This week was a case in point - two galloping gourmets from Carlow, Nigel and Kay Gordon, had sent me an excellent list of places to eat in their general area. I decided to take their advice and that's why my wife and I set off for Tonlegee House in Athy on a sunny evening, the hedgerows on the way all aflower with cow parsley and stitchwort.

We'd been out the previous evening celebrating the success of her exhibition in The Gate so we were both a little weary after a long night in da Roberto's in Blackrock. Susie took a little persuading to go out two nights in a row; 'I'm peopled out,' she announced. But the promise of a good food prevailed and off we went. It was the night that Manchester United were playing for the European Cup and I don't remember the roads being so deserted since the last World Cup Final. We'd been told that last orders were at nine, but the empty roads allowed us to get there in good time, a bit after half-past eight.

Tonlegee House is an eighteenth century house that is now a restaurant and country house hotel, just on the outskirts of Athy. It's a three bay house with a gravel car park at the end of a drive and it's surrounded by well-kept gardens. We walked in and were shown into a lounge where we were given menus and a wine list. We sat drinking mineral water and looked around. The walls were hung with prints of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and there were comfortable sofas and armchairs. Susie gets more critical with tiredness and was looking around muttering darkly about the windows needing a good wash and the window boxes some attention. I have to admit that neither of these were things that impinged on my consciousness until Susie pointed them out, but I did agree with her that our greeting was informal almost to the point of casualness. I concentrated on the wine list, which although not overly long, is reasonably priced and quite well selected. I found a robust Italian red from Verona called Santo Stefano which was good value at ú18.

The menu looked interesting. The starters were all around the ú5-6 mark and included unusual things like breast of pigeon and terrine of veal. Main courses were between ú15 and ú18.50 and there were dishes here too that looked a little out of the ordinary - fillet of beef with Roquefort sauce or a lasagna of goats' cheese and roasted vegetables. In the end we ordered like this: crab, mussel and prawn soup baked with puff pastry for Susie and quail and wild mushroom pie for me. Susie followed that with breast of Guinea fowl and I had the saddle of rabbit. While we waited to be brought to our table we slowly realised that mine was now the only car in the car park. It looked like we were going to be the only diners, since the rest of world seemed to be at home glued to the soccer. Personally I love being in quiet restaurants since you tend to get much better service, but I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for Tonlegee House since they now had to open the kitchen and the dining room just for us. I remembered well how many times I'd been in a similar situation when I ran my country restaurant and how it often occurred to me how much better it would have been to have no one at all, so that you could close up and go home early.

We were shown into the dining room which is a very attractive room in the country house style. As soon as we sat down Susie was presented with her soup, which looked wonderful - a big white bowl with a perfectly cooked pastry top. In moments she was in Nirvana, unusually for her persuading me to try it and saying things like 'amazing' and 'delicious' between mouthfuls. My starter was good too, very well flavoured, but the pastry was just a touch overdone. This was such a good start that all of Susie's slightly negative first impressions began to evaporate like dew in the morning sun. She looked around and said 'Perfect. No background music, no one else's conversation to distract, just us.' Certainly we'd had a few nights on the trot of merrymaking, so the stillness of the restaurant was a welcome change.

The main courses were every bit as good as the starters. Susie's Guinea fowl was beautifully cooked and presented with a ballotine of the leg, which was a remarkable piece of cooking. My rabbit - I dish I pride myself on cooking - was much better than I can do and so won my admiration totally. The sad thing was that neither of us had much appetite and so couldn't really do justice to the good food on our plates. In the end we asked for a doggy bag rather than see it go to waste. Don't know when the dog last got a meal of that quality.

The dessert menu came and they were all priced at ú5. Under duress from me Susie picked one, the chocolate surprise. There were three different chocolate things on the plate; a mousse, a cake and white chocolate ice-cream all three of which were quite delicious. I would have been very happy to linger over my coffee and then perhaps a little cognac, but Susie pointed out that we'd be keeping everyone up if we did, which might be a little selfish of us. 'And anyway,' she added as a clincher, 'we've still got a long drive home.' Unarguable, so I asked for the bill which came to ú69.45. Looking at it now I see that our one-and-half litre bottle of mineral water cost a modest ú2.50. I promise not to harp on about mineral water prices much longer, but next time I see it at ú4 a litre I'll simply drink the tap water.