More and more of my friends are taking Feng Shui seriously. They plan new houses after consultations and they change existing houses to meet the needs of the force. In some ways it's like traditional dowsing; for instance there are places where your bed should be if you want to sleep well and there are other places where the bed will absorb enough bad energy to make you sick. Now you may or may not feel that there's something in it, but I'll wager that there are rooms in which you feel more comfortable than others. Something about the way a room is laid out will make you feel either comfortable or not. It could be no more than a very personal dislike of the decor, or it could be, as the Chinese believe, an effect of the orientation and layout. Personally I'm increasingly going for the Feng Shui explanation - some rooms are laid out in a way that at some unconscious level makes me feel uncomfortable. In the past I've tended to put this odd feeling down to something in the design, and I've concluded that it was no more than a lack of style that was somehow irritating me. I'm not so sure any more.

My friend and neighbour Rosa McFeely went with me to Jacob's Ladder in Dublin's Nassau Street. It's up a flight of stairs and the windows in the dining room overlook the greens of Trinity College. We arrived fairly early and were shown to our table which was in a far corner of the room. Chivalrous that I am I ensured that Rosa sat on the bench seat and looked out at the room, while I took the other side, where my elbow rested against the banisters of a short flight of steps leading to a store room. The room is in the minimalist style - lots of plain wall; a varnished wooden floor; plain, square, wooden tables and quite severe wooden chairs. The effect when the restaurant is empty is discomfiting. It felt cold and the lack of any soft furnishings made it noisy. Within an hour or so it was full and the effect of starkness had softened somewhat. Perhaps it was just where I was sitting, but I never got really comfortable. Why this was the case I'm not entirely sure, but for the moment I'll put it down to Feng Shui.

The opening moments in a restaurant are much like the opening moments of a play. If a play starts with assurance and confidence the audience relaxes, since it feels instinctively that all will be well. If there's a shaky start, then the cast have to work much harder to get the audience back onside again. It's no different in a restaurant. Little things can set a tone - not individually of course - but cumulatively. We came in, were greeted a little perfunctorily, and shown to the table. We were given a wine list, but no menus. After a while I was asked had I chosen my wine and I replied that I'd rather choose my wine after I'd chosen my food. Menus came shortly afterwards and we sipped on water while we read. As is the way in many restaurants, a tray of breads arrived and we noticed that we had no plates. These came promptly and we started on the breads. There's nothing in this list that's in any way major, but I was left with the feeling that the restaurant hadn't really opened yet. The wine list is short, covering twenty-six wines of which the majority are New World. There are good wines on it, like the Meerlust Rubicon from South Africa, but the mark up is fairly steep, closer to 200% than 100%. If, like me, you're prepared to spend about £20 on a bottle, this means that instead of getting a pretty good bottle of wine for your money you end up with a lesser wine. This too is a source of discontent; after all, a wine like Louis Latour's Macon Lugny will taste the same off another list at £16 as it would do here at £21 - it's not as though being handled by a French waiter has suddenly added to its value. So in the end I picked a red, a Bankside Shiraz listed at £19, which was good enough but slow to open out.

The menu was a Christmas three-course set dinner at £31.50. Starters included marinated salmon with a leek and bacon quiche, goats cheese souffle, game tourte, duck confit, cream of parsnip soup, fried chestnut parcels with quails eggs and a crab salad with an avocado mousse. All interesting looking dishes and from them Rosa chose the crab salad and I picked the duck confit. Main courses looked equally interesting; roast duck with Bok Choi, fillet of brill, fillet of beef with wild mushroom ravioli, roast fillet of salmon, venison with a cobbler of vegetables and pot-roasted pheasant. From these Rosa chose the fillet of beef and I had the venison.

With all the decisions made we sat back and sipped our wine, while I practised my Spanish with Rosa. The room was filling up and for once the majority of diners were men. An amuse bouche arrived, which was a chicken and basil mousse. I found it dry and so left most of it, but it seems churlish to look gift horses in the mouth. The starters arrived very nicely presented and I eyed my duck confit carefully. I know what I mean by duck confit, and indeed what the Gascons mean by it, but I've seen all manner of dishes in this city with that name, none of which bear any resemblance to the French dish. Mine was a small cylinder of finely diced meat which had a definite gamy flavour but seemed to taste little of duck. None the less it was good and I ate most of it. Rosa meanwhile was enjoying her crab salad which, she pronounced, had a crisp, fresh taste.

Our main courses were good, although I thought my cobbler of vegetables rather tasteless. While we looked at the menus again to choose our desserts, I realised that my starter had been the game tourte, which explained why it didn't look much like a confit. We had a chocolate fondant and a plum pudding for dessert, both of which were good. We finished with coffees and the bill came to £85.35 to which I added a tip.

Jacob's Ladder has a competent kitchen and competent floor staff, but I felt that it costs more than it should. With dinner at this price, which is very much towards the upper range, glitches should be very few or non-existent and material comfort could be more in evidence.