It's always a bit incestuous when journalists dine with journalists, but Gayle Killalea makes for great company. When we met before going off to dinner I was wondering what was I going to talk about with a social diarist? Social chit-chat? Apart from anything else, since giving up smoking my conversation has become seriously limited to two subjects; God I'd love a fag and God I hate these Nicorette substitutes. But after a few moments we were talking mathematics. No, seriously, we were. Two books, Zero - which is all about the mathematical concept of zero - and another about the impossible concept of the square root of minus one. Real conversational ice-breakers, I can tell you.

Now I rarely review restaurants on a Friday or a Saturday, but Gayle was keen to go Diep Le Shaker - a restaurant that has the most improbable combination of words in its name than any I've ever come across - because there's a bigger buzz of excitement at the weekend, plus music. As it turns out she was right, if you ever wondered where all the bright young things congregate, wonder no more. If I hadn't been dining with a bright young thing myself I might just have felt a little old, surrounded as we were with Dublin's glittering twenty and thirty somethings.

When you walk in there's a very definite sensation that the building was designed to be a restaurant, rather than converted into one. It's on two floors, there's plenty of glass in the roof, so it's bright and has an airy feel. We were greeted warmly on arrival and I wondered briefly was it for my benefit, then I realised that it was obviously for hers, since she's much more of a celebrity than I could ever be. Also, it transpired, she eats here a lot, so she was able to steer me onto the better things on the menu.

The menu and wine list arrived, so I had to turn my attention from numerology to the job in hand. The wine list is nicely presented, appears to be largely from one wholesaler, and is marked up by a factor three, making it an expensive list. £22.50 for a Latour Macon Lugny is very much at the upper reaches of the price scale, matched only by La Stampa. I know it's a whinge of mine, but I'd prefer to find wines at an affordable price. For £20 you really ought to buying a very good wine, not simply an acceptable one. Anyway after muttering darkly for a while I picked the Chilean Cousino Macul, a decent red which was listed at £17.50. We accompanied this with a big bottle of mineral water.

The menu is also prettily presented; glossy card and nicely laid out. The menu to my eyes seems to be more Eastern fusion than specifically Thai and it's long enough to give you a wide array of choices. There's a whole page of starters which are priced at about £6, except for the crispy duck which comes at £36 for a whole one, £18 for a half portion or £10 for a quarter. You can find chicken, spring rolls, hot spicy fish cakes, marinated chicken, deep-fried prawns in tempura, then soups, then the house speciality of tiger's cry - which is somewhat prosaically char-grilled beef - stir fried beef, chicken dishes and a whole page of sea food like lobster, king prawns, sea bass and monkfish. These main courses are priced from around £12 up to £18, which means that despite its reputation for price, you can eat here quite reasonably. It's the wine that brings the price up. Gayle was keen on the crispy duck and ordered that, and I chose the prawns in tempura as my starter.

When they arrived, nicely presented, Gayle set to work making the crispy duck pancakes with sliced shallots and plum sauce. 'I love to play with my food,' she told me while making up a continual supply of pancakes for both of us. Between my prawns and these pancakes - you could probably have fed three people with what there was - I awaited the main courses with a seriously depleted appetite. Gayle had chosen the red beef curry, and I'd picked a mixed sea food stir-fry, since it gave me a chance to taste a variety of things. We'd ordered some fried rice and noodles as well, and the table began to look like an embarrasse de richesse. I ate and enjoyed the prawns, monkfish and squid that were in my stir-fry, ate none of the vegetables and touched but a spoonful of rice. The moral here is to go easier than I did on the starters if you want to eat the main courses.

And all the while the music played, much of it from an era that I knew and loved, like Tamla Motown and the Beatles. It certainly had my feet tapping. This rather cosy tete-a-tete came to an abrupt end when we were joined by Michael Colgan, tanned and fit after a sojourn in the Canaries, who took to the music like the proverbial duck to water. Before long he was demonstrating his enviable tan and giving us a demonstration of Salsa dancing up and down the aisle between the tables. It was an infectious display of joy in being alive, and it wasn't long before Gayle and I joined him. Perhaps it may not have been very decorous, but it was certainly fun.

Sitting still over two rather good espressos I thought over the meal again. This was competent food and well presented, but not deeply memorable. In a way this restaurant made me think of the Unicorn but with an average age of fifteen years less: it's a fun place to be and my guess is that most of customers would know one another. It's the sort of place where you'd see famous faces on occasion and it does have the cachet of being hot and happening. It mightn't be the food per se that would take me back again, but I really liked the room and the ambience. The service was good as well, prompt and friendly - but I think I might remember the dancing the most. The bill for the two of us came to £74.25, which included a 10% service charge.