When I was a city boy, many years ago, one of my pleasure jaunts was to take my open-topped sports car on a summer evening and drive out of Dublin to Roundwood, specifically to the Roundwood Inn. The old road south twisted and turned its way through Bray, then on to Kilmacanogue and then came the long, desolate stretch across Calary Bog until you got to Roundwood. At the time a trip to the Wicklow Hills seemed like a real journey into the unknown, an adventure into unfamiliar territory beyond the pale. Today the roads are wider, straighter, better surfaced and there's even a motorway section, but oddly the trip takes about as long as it always has. What prompted these trips back then was the knowledge that at the end of the trek was a big, blazing log fire and good food. I didn't know it at the time, but some years later it was to become my local. It's a place I've been going to for over twenty years and I've got to know it well.

You may wonder why it's taken me so long to review a place I know so well - but that's just the problem, it's never easy to appraise an old friend. This week it was my son Rocco's birthday, he was home from Florence and when I asked him where he might like to have a birthday lunch he was unhesitating. 'Let's go to the Roundwood,' he said, and so we did. The same big log fire blazes where it always has, the wooden tables shine as they always have, the same comforting things are on the menu. There is a proper restaurant as well, but it's only open in the evenings and for lunch at the weekends. So we sit, as usual, in the lounge alongside the bar, which is decorated in the white walls, dark wood and horse-brass style of old coaching inns - which in fact it once was. I have no idea why it should be so, but an awful lot of the people I know who live in Dublin find their way to the Roundwood either at the weekends or on weekday skites. It's a rare occasion that I walk in there and don't find someone I know. It's like the Horseshoe in that respect, or even Finnegans in Dalkey. There is a theory that there's a direct line of communication from the Roundwood to Finnegans to the Horseshoe - something akin to jungle drums passing news from Wicklow to Dublin and back again. It may be a far-fetched theory, but it works in practice more often than is comfortable.

When I'm in the Roundwood for a bar lunch I don't look at the menu any more, I know I'm going to have the chicken in a basket (yes, it can still be got) and a beer. This time I took a moment to look at the both the menu and the blackboard on the wall, listing the day's specials. Although the bar lunch menu rarely changes, the daily specials keep up with the passing seasons, my winter favourite being the venison ragout with red cabbage. The menu lists starters like a vegetarian broth, a goulash, a roll-mop salad and a shrimp cocktail all at under a fiver, and then for main courses there are things like a sea-food platter, gravadlax, fresh salmon salad, smoked trout salad, sea-food pancakes, Irish stew and, of course, the aforementioned chicken in the basket, all of which are under a tenner except for the seafood platter.

Because this was a birthday lunch and we wanted a little treat, we ordered a dozen oysters at £16.50 from the specials menu as a starter between us, and then a fresh salmon salad for Susie and chicken for Rocco and me. The most spectacular oysters I ever had were not, as one might expect, in Moran's of the Weir, but here in the Roundwood on the occasion of my wife's last birthday. This time they were nearly as exceptional; big, fat and very fresh, they arrived on a platter of crushed ice with plenty of lemon wedges and a bottle of Tabasco. I must have been well into my thirties before I had my first oyster, so I was happy to see my son enjoying them in his early twenties. Looking at them on a half shell the thought occurred, as it so often does, who was the brave person who first looked at an oyster and said 'I think I'll eat that.'? I mean they don't exactly look as though they're going to taste nice.

Now there's not a whole lot you can say about chicken in the basket, but I'll say this; here the chicken is consistently good and the chips are always exactly the way I like them. What you get is crisp chips that have been cooked in fresh, clean oil and a half chicken that's also crisp-skinned and always well-cooked. Sometimes I find it's the simplest dishes that please the most and there are times when I want nothing more than this. A little ramekin of mayonnaise into which I dip my chips - a habit picked up in Spain many years ago - and I'm a happy bunny. Susie has more refined tastes than me and prefers the healthy plate of poached salmon and a salad, which looked and tasted fine. Mind you, it never stops her taking a handful of chips from my basket, while professing her contempt for such plebeian fare.

This was a lunch like so many that I've eaten here; simple but well prepared and well presented. It's honest because it's unpretentious and it's good value too. Normally it would have cost me less but the oysters put the cost of lunch and drinks for the three of us to £45.50. The restaurant is a more elaborate affair, with a menu that has a strong German flavour - not surprising when you know that the owner's German - and one of the best listings of fine German wines that I've seen. There are Eisweins, Ausleses and Kabinett Spatleses that you will not find anywhere else, and there are wines that give the lie to the pre-conception that all German wines are sweet, flowery and full of sugar to make up for the unripeness of the grapes.

It's selfishness really that's stopped me writing about this place. I like the fact that most of time mid-week I can come here and get a table without having to book. If this review means that I'll have a problem in the future, I may rue the day that I chose to write about my own local hostelry.