I've been thinking about this simple question: what makes a good meal? The more you think about it, the more elusive any answer becomes. But having devoted a bit of thought to the problem I've come up with this. If you're in your own house or with friends, the answer is easy - good food makes a good meal. You like the surroundings, you like the company, so the only variable is the food. If you're in a restaurant however, other factors come into play; the surroundings, the service and the price. It's not just a question of good food: you need something else to turn it into a good meal. What that something else is depends on your personal tastes and also your mood. If what you really want is something quick and simple, then an elaborate meal, no matter how good, is not going to suit you. And conversely, if what you want is a gastronomic experience, then a simple, wellprepared meal isn't going to hit the spot either. So if you find a restaurant that suits your mood and everything else is up to scratch, then you've had a good meal.

I give you these musings because I had a good meal in Velure, a small restaurant in Dublin that left me feeling very contented and I was trying to analyse why that should be the case. Of course the food was good, but I felt totally at ease with everything else that was on offer. I'd gone into Dublin to meet Audrey O'Connor, a student of applied computational linguistics, who is also someone who enjoys good food. Obviously a large part of our conversation was taken up with me trying to understand what precisely it was that she was studying. I think I know now; it's about getting computers to understand language - something that just might make technology easier to deal with one day. We met in the Horseshoe and then walked to South William street where Velure lives.

As soon as we went in there was someone there to greet us, take our coats and show us to our table. The restaurant's in two rooms; the first one as you walk in has a large bar counter on the left and a selection of tables of two and four. Beyond that there's another room which is furnished with hugely comfortable plush banquettes - but more of this later. We sat in the first room at a good-sized table set with linen and good cutlery, with enough space between the tables so that no one else's company was forced upon us. I started with the wine list, which is quite short and has a higher than average mark-up. This was my only negative impression of the evening, but it's a point worth making. Like most people that I know, I have a mental budget for wine - about £20 in my case, preferably less than more. When I find a list with a high mark-up I don't spend £30 to get the same quality of wine that I usually do, I spend the same amount and get a wine that's not as good as I'd like. I ended up with a white South American Montana Reserva, which was pleasant enough at £19.

We had more than the usual bills of fare, because there's also a list of cocktails, which you can drink at the bar or at the tables. This is no after-thought, because Velure has something of the feel of a club. It's extremely relaxing and there's good music - although I'd have to say that if the music wasn't to your taste you might find it intrusive. Basically it's an eclectic mix of Jazz, Big Bands, Bacharach, Janis Joplin and classics like Cole Porter, Frank Sinatra and Dino. If you like the music, you might be able to persuade them to give you one of their own CD mixes.

Given this kind of ambience I wasn't expecting to find such a well-designed menu - innovative and interesting. Starters included crab and coriander soup, warm goat's cheese with seedless grapes and a quince jelly, bruschetta, Thai style marinated beef, salad Nicoise and foie gras with toasted brioche and marinated strawberries. Except for the foie gras at £8.50 the starters range from £3.25 to £5.50. Some of the main courses were roasted peppers stuffed with ratatouille and tomato couli, rocket and wild mushroom risotto, panfried hake with a chickpea stew, a magret of duck with a pear and celeriac puree, roast loin of lamb with a saffron cous-cous, a fillet of beef with crushed Parmesan, and a tempura of prawns and roasted scallops with a basil risotto. These ranged from £10.95 to £16.75 for the prawns and scallops.

Audrey doesn't eat meat, so her choices were the bruschetta to start and the prawns and scallops to follow. I chose the marinated beef salad as a starter with the mushroom risotto as my main course. We sipped our wine and talked of syntax and semantics - the way one might - and then stopped when the starters arrived; nicely presented and very tasty. I was beginning to feel that I'd made a good choice in Velure, a feeling compounded when our main courses came. Audrey's prawns were good, but her scallops were divine. Can't remember when I last tasted them so perfectly cooked. I enjoyed my risotto enormously as well, although at this time of year mushrooms must be by necessity dried and reconstituted. We finished the meal with a shared chocolate fondant, which Audrey chose and I'm glad she did - a little pudding that when poked exuded a rich, thick, chocolate inside that was sinfully good. By this stage I was feeling very contented, we'd had excellent food and had been served professionally, attentively and with friendliness. As I said at the beginning, that's a combination that's hard to find and hard to beat. I was expecting some friends to join us, so we moved to the banquettes where we could all sit together when they came, which is how I know how comfy they are. It also gave me a chance to taste other dishes, all of which were of the same high standard.

Velure do something called 'Linner' (sounds better than 'dunch') on a Friday, starting at 3 o'clock. You can eat a late lunch or early dinner and start your weekend off in comfort and ease. If I had to pick just one epithet for this restaurant it would be 'relaxed'. It's a comfortable and easy place to be, the kind of place that removes the world's cares from your shoulders. Precisely, in fact, what a restaurant is supposed to do. All I've described, plus two bottles of mineral water and a couple of cocktails for Audrey came to £74.80.