It's become an annual event: a group of us go off for lunch in early December, an outing designed to mark the onset of the Christmas festivities. This year the venue was the Nuremore Hotel in Carrickmacross, just as it was last year. The main reason that we go there is simple: the food is very good. From the outside you mightn't guess what sort of restaurant lies inside. The original hotel is now hard to spot as it sits amid the accretions of sports centres and function rooms. It looks like what it is; a successful provincial hotel with its own eighteen-hole golf course, which is not the sort of enterprise that often has a serious kitchen. But there's another reason that we go there and it's a horribly flash reason; you can land a helicopter just outside the hotel. It may be a flash way to travel, but it's amazing; twenty-five minutes flying time from our rendezvous in Enniskerry had us in the Nuremore's car park as opposed to maybe two-and-a-half hours by road. Also you get fantastic views of the Boyne Valley and Newgrange, which lie on the flight path.

After a quick walk for some of our party to build up an appetite, while I sat in the lobby and read the paper over a cup of coffee, it was time for the main event. The dining room in the Nuremore is large and split level. It's decorated in a style I can best describe as good-hotel plush: large tables covered in white linen; wide, comfortably upholstered chairs; soft warm carpet, plenty of dark mahogany and soothing wallpaper. The seven of us sat down at a large, round table by a window and settled into the enjoyable task of picking things from the wine list and menus.

The wine list looks a little like an Edwardian family bible and is about the same size and thickness; it's bound in red leatherette and looks pretty imposing. Turning the pages you find a hundred or so wines, some half-bottles, dessert wines and champagnes. It's a good list, with wines that have had some thought put into their choosing and most importantly, it has a moderate mark up. The better shippers from each region are represented, so someone has taken the trouble to source good wines from whatever supplier they come from, rather than the more common approach of buying all the wines from one or two wholesalers. Although you can find expensive clarets and Burgundies, there is plenty to choose from in the £15 -£20 range, something that I like to see. The listings include a lot of my favourite wines; Meerlust Rubicon from South Africa, Chateau Musar from the Lebanon, Ochoa from Spain and Essencia Orange Muscat from California. Just to start the ball rolling we had a bottle of the Billecart Salmon rose champagne while we were choosing our meals. For the red we had the Don Melchor private reserve 1996 from Concha y Toro and for the white a small domaine from the Jurancon.

The Nuremore offers a four-course set lunch, which at £16 is remarkable value. Carrot and coriander soup first, then a choice of cocktail of crab and langoustine, goats cheese tartlet or a mosaic of winter game with truffle. For main courses there's a choice of grilled fillet of beef, tempura of monkfish with chorizo risotto, herb roasted cannon of lamb or oven roasted pheasant with colcannon. Desserts were mango cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding, a white chocolate cheesecake and an ice cream Pavlova with fresh fruit.

Between us we covered all of these dishes, so we all got to taste a bit of everything. Dave, who was sitting beside me, was taking no chances at the ordering stage and ordered two starters, just to be sure he'd get to taste them. He needn't have worried, we're a sharing, caring group and our plates orbited the table like satellites. Before our starters arrived we got a dainty amuse bouche of a puree of cod wrapped in a slice of smoked salmon, a scallop on top of that and a tiny scoop of caviar on top of that. Two of our group, who never eat fish, were so taken by the look of it that they both tried it - quite a compliment to the chef. All of the starters were beautifully presented, especially the game terrine which came as a slice showing the patterns of the various meats bound together by their own aspic. I didn't taste the goats' cheese as I see a lot of it these days, but the crab and langoustine cocktail was really good.

The first taste of the Don Melchor from the decanter heralded the onset of the main courses. I'd chosen the monkfish tempura which was excellent; a crisp, thin batter enclosing the perfectly cooked monkfish. On my left Dave was eating pheasant which had been cooked just a little pink, which in my view is right for game. On my right Pilot John was enjoying his lamb cannon, although thankfully he was washing it down with just mineral water. Our lives were in his hands, I reminded him, a little unnecessarily. Across the table I got a forkful of the beef fillet, which was as tender as it ought to be, and lastly a taste of John's lamb. I had to keep reminding myself that this high quality food, extremely professional service and pleasing surroundings came with a price tag of £16. I know that for many restaurants lunch is an advertisement and is priced well below dinner prices, but by any standards this lunch was great value for money.

And the delights weren't over. Looking down the desserts I couldn't drag my eye away from the sticky toffee pudding. Nursery food still holds attractions for me - it's got that warm comforting feeling of sheltered childhood. But this was nothing like anything I ever got in the nursery; it was so light that the weight of my fork was enough to cut it. I describe only this dessert because that's the only one that got ordered. We had two half bottles of dessert wines to accompany this, a Beaumes de Venise and the Essencia Orange Muscat from California, which worked out at a glass each, just right for pudding wine.

After a meal as good as this, the temptation is to sit and linger but after we'd had a couple of coffees Pilot John was starting to fret. At this time of year the light goes fast and for all their versatility helicopters aren't great at flying in the dark. Seven very happy punters made their way back to Dublin, with plans already made for next year.