It was a Hollywood funeral that made us late for dinner. The road was packed with cars and mourners bringing the place to a standstill. Hundreds of people filed slowly along the road to the gates of the church. We were on our way to Naas - sorry, did I mention that that was Hollywood, Co. Wicklow? - to dine in Jo Olives in the main street. We'd been there a couple of years ago in a big group and I'd really liked the food, so even though the mist was hanging low over the hills, a drive over the Wicklow Gap seemed like a small price to pay for good meal.

It's traditional wisdom in the catering business that you can't get people to go upstairs - they prefer to dine at ground level. I think that's probably true, but there's another old saying 'make a better mouse-trap and they'll beat a path to your door.' If the food's good, then people will seek you out, even if it is upstairs. And that's just where Jo Olive's is; above Kavanagh's pub in Naas Main Street. You walk through a door marked 'restaurant' and you're in an annexe of the pub. A flight of stairs takes you from here up to the restaurant.

Before I tell you how good the food is here, I'm going to get my complaints out of the way first. The dining room is quaint enough in a rustic sort of way, but it's plain and the seats are bum-numbingly uncomfortable. There's a sort of MFI feel to the furniture; this would be acceptable enough for a fast-food outlet, but it doesn't feel right in a restaurant where the food is so good it needs to be lingered over. I don't think I've ever eaten so well in such discomfort. Normally this standard of cooking comes with all the trappings of luxury, so what you have here is something that will appeal only to people who value the quality of their food above their comfort. I suppose what I'm saying is that the room is out of balance with the food and the very professional service.

So, with that out of way, let me tell you the good bits. The menu and wine list are all one package, and the menu is printed in big, bold letters. As one of those people who is increasingly convinced that policemen are getting younger and that telephone directories are using smaller and smaller print, this big type-face is great - easily visible even in candlelight. Because the print is big, there are abbreviations to get it all to fit - and not all of them are instantly apparent. I'd worked out that Lemon Dr wasn't medical, but a dressing; std squid were neither long distance nor transmitted, but simply sauteed; but smd chicken had me stuck. Susan Morley, the artist, who was sitting across the table from me, tutted impatiently. 'Smoked, obviously,' she said. 'Ah, yes, obviously.' The menu has six starters and five main courses, plus there's a blackboard on the wall with four more of each as the night's specials. The starters are all around £6, the main courses about £16 and the desserts £5. Between the board and the menu there's a good selection of dishes to choose from, including things like cheese ravioli, seared beef salad, goats cheese salad, std squid, warm duck salad and pan-fried prawns as starters, and then for main courses there's scallops with artichokes, sole tempura, black bass, grilled lamb cutlets, chicken kebabs, grilled sirloin and veal shank blanquette. Susie chose the prawns for starters and the tempura of sole for her main course and I chose the std squid to start and the veal shank to follow.

With that done I started on the wine list. It's a modest enough list of a dozen reds and a dozen whites with four half bottles of each. They're priced, with the odd exception, between £11 and £20, which is what I like to see. Possibly to keep prices within this bracket the list is overwhelmingly made up of world wines: there's only one Bordeaux chateau on the list, which is surprising since the cuisine is predominately French. Since Susie was on fish and I was on veal white seemed right, so I chose the Australian xxx Ridge oaked Chardonnay, a really delightful full-nosed wine, rich in fruit and flavour - good value at £17.50. A bottle of mineral water at £3 completed the drinks order. A basket of home made breads was on the table and it came with a spiced butter served as little balls. We picked at this while we waited for the starters to arrive, with me occasionally twisting in my chair. The starters, when they came, made the wait worthwhile - Susie's prawns were perfectly cooked and very good, while my std squid was without doubt the tenderest squid I've eaten for a long time. I'd expected it to be dry, in the sense that fried normally means the absence of liquid, but it came in bowl and was cooked with stock. The body of the squid, the pure white part, had been scored with a knife and was presented, rather unusually, like pasta tubes. Maybe std stood for stewed, but either way this was a great dish.

Main courses were equally good, Susie's tempura of sole came as three fillets in tempura, light and well-cooked. My veal shank was cooked as shank should be, tender enough to take off the bone and eat with just a fork. It was a big piece of meat and it nearly defeated my appetite, but Susie persuaded me to force myself to eat some greens. I'm glad I did; there were wonderful combinations of flavours in the two little dishes of vegetables on the table, which were nicely underdone. Susie gave me some of her sole to taste: it was fresh and cleanly flavoured with a light, but not superlight, tempura.

The rather interestingly named bossanova of coffee and Kahlua was Susie's choice of dessert. It was a feather-light mousse and came on a thin, equally light sponge base and also looked beautiful on the plate. I forced myself to try a cooked fig wrapped in filigree pastry that looked like spun sugar. I liked it, but Susie's was much better. For once I decided to be sensible and finished with a decaffeinated coffee and a glass of the delicious Elysium, a Californian dessert wine made from black Muscat. A good way to round off what had been a very good meal that cost £73.85, to which I added a tip.

They tell me that the restaurant is about to undergo some major extensions and renovations in the near future, so hopefully my gripes - which I can't believe are unique to me - will be addressed.