Last week I went looking for an Italian restaurant and didn't find one, this week I went looking for an French meal and got an Italian one. It had been a busy week and it was Friday night with still nowhere reviewed. My wife and I set off for Dublin with no reservations and a very loose plan to find a French restaurant in Rathmines. Trying to be anonymous and not booking has its drawbacks - the place was full and there was no hope of a table. Still, nil desperandum, we got back into the car and started circling the many restaurants in Rathmines and Ranelagh. One after the other was full and time was passing. But did we panic? Only slightly. We hit Ranelagh at 9.30 with an increasing sense of urgency and a mounting appetite.

We walked along Ranelagh counting the many take-aways, and then Susie spotted a trattoria called 'Antica Venezia' which looked attractive and was very full. She went in and was told there would be a table free in 30 minutes, so a brief stop in a pub passed the time. When we got back we were shown to our table and I had time to look around and take in my surroundings. It actually looks like an Italian restaurant: there are solid, square wooden tables covered in paper napery, ladder-backed raffia-based chairs just like the ones in every restaurant in Italy and even raffiacovered Chianti bottle candlesticks covered in wax. There was a kitchen full of Italians and there was that hum of chat and noise that only a busy restaurant generates. We felt instantly at ease and looked down the menu.

Starters included all the Italian classics: bruschetta, melon and Parma ham, antipasto misto, stuffed mushrooms, mussels marinara, Caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella plus smoked salmon and Caesar salad. They were mostly between £3.50 and £5. Next came a page of pastas which were priced between £7-10. Lasagna, fettucine with gamberoni, carbonara, Amatriciana, arrabbiata, Toscana, pesto, Bolognese, Napoletana, Marinara and cannelloni. Then the main courses - steak, chicken cacciatore, lamb chops, fresh salmon and scaloppine Donatello. This last one, the escalope, looked tempting to me. Susie had already decided on the Caprese salad to start and the fettucine with prawns to follow. I'd got as far as the antipasto to begin with and had nearly decided on the escalope when I saw a pizza pass by on its way to another table. It was big, and looked delicious. I had to reassess.

There's a long list of pizzas between £8-10, with standards like Marguerita, seafood and Quattro Stagioni plus some others, like boscaiolo, vegetarian and hot and spicy. I looked vainly for my own favourite, the capricciosa, and then I read the note at the bottom of the page - 'mix your own from the following ingredients'. That settled it, everything I needed for a capricciosa was there, some Parma ham, mozzarella, sausage, olives, capers, artichokes and egg. Perfect.

With that done I started on the wine list. There are two pages, one of reds and one of whites. Less than half the list is Italian, the rest is French and New World. All of wines were reasonably priced, the majority of them between £12 and £16, but none of then had vintages or shippers listed. I was struggling to find one that really took my fancy when Susie asked our waiter if they had beer. 'Only Italian beer' came the reply and I looked no more at the wines. 'Nastro Azzurro' is Peroni's best beer and for me, it's a real taste of Italy. Both us of felt that Peroni would be the ideal accompaniment to our meal, since what we'd chosen was pretty much what we have in Italy in our local pizzeria, Maurizio's.

A basket of bread came with the starters, Vienna roll I think, and we started eating. My antipasto consisted of slices of excellent salami, good mortadella and okay Parma Ham with a few pickles in the middle. Susie's Caprese salad was tasty enough, but the mozzarella wasn't buffalo and the only basil wasn't leaves, but dried and shredded. Still, at £4.50 it was fine.

Two more bottles of Peroni helped us through the main courses. Susie had done the non-Italian thing and had chosen pasta as her main course. A well-made and properly reduced sauce, well-filled with big, fat prawns came on her fettucine. I tasted a bit and agreed with her that this was a good dish, cooked by someone who knew what they were doing. My pizza was pretty good, too. About the biggest I've seen in Ireland, about 12 inches in diameter, it was cooked just right and the filling was exactly as I'd ordered.

Neither of us could eat a dessert, even though they were priced at a modest £3.50, so I finished with an espresso, which they make well in Antica Venezia. This turned out to be a better meal than I expected, since I tend to find that most Italian restaurants in Ireland cook a sort of bastardised Italian food. It's got a lot to do with ingredients: obviously the tomatoes that came on Susie's salad wouldn't compare to tomatoes ripened in the Italian sun, but I couldn't help feeling that this restaurant could make a quantum leap in quality simply by sourcing better ingredients. I know buffalo mozzarella costs more than the plainer cow's milk mozzarella, but I wouldn't mind paying a little extra to get the real thing. Fresh basil leaves can be got, too, so a real Caprese salad isn't the impossibility it once was.

From what I did taste, it's clear that there's a competent chef in the kitchen, but the menu doesn't give the kitchen much room to show off. The only dish of the main courses that was a little unusual was the escalope, which I nearly chose. Perhaps they're happy to stick with the old reliables, but I think that Antica Venezia could make a very good restaurant with a few changes. But as it is you get a real flavour of Italy and it really isn't expensive: the bill, including mineral water, came to £44.70. We'd eaten well and had been served with charm and professionalism. I liked it.