It was a cold, windy, wet night in Dublin as I got back into the dining seat again after a couple of weeks in the sun. Winter breaks have a very definite downside to them; eventually you have to come back home to mid-winter. Not only is it a thermal shock, you get no sympathy from anyone. I suppose you can't blame them - after all the hardy ones who stayed and faced the blizzards can't really work up much pity for someone who's managed to avoid them. I'm probably a few kilos heavier than I was before Christmas as a result of two weeks on a pork and salmon diet - you know the one - eat like a pig and drink like a fish. Even my normally indefatigable digestion had been strained to the limits after two weeks of liver-crippling excess, so although I was out to eat again, it was with a much reduced appetite.

The end of last year had me in a couple of expensive restaurants, which led me to think that it must be possible to find good food without having to spend a fortune. A few places during the year fitted that bill - The Bosun's Chair in Courtown, lunch in Bruno's of Kildare street and a great lunch in the Nuremore Hotel. But whatever else is happening in this booming economy, restaurant prices are rising relentlessly. I got a letter from a reader over Christmas enclosing a bill from the Berkely Room in the Berkely Court Hotel, where a bottle of mineral water costs £6.61 with the service charge. That's ten times the price of petrol and is probably the record for Dublin city. If you can beat that, let me know.

I was in Dublin to meet Audrey O'Connor, who is something of a I.T. whiz and who was very helpful to me when I was getting the foodandwine.net up and running. The last time we went to dinner we were in Velure and I'd enjoyed it. Because we'd planned to meet some friends later in Ely Place, I chosen The Ely as our venue for the night, which would leave us with a very short walk after dinner. We walked in and found it something of a déjà vu. Red plush banquette seats surrounded the wooden tables, good jazz was playing through the speakers, a gas-fired hearth blazed welcomingly and for a moment we were both reminded of Velure, which has some similar features. The ground floor is split level, two tables can be reached via a short flight of stairs which overlook the road, while six or seven tables surround a counter and the fireplace in the rest of the room. I thought the tables up by the windows too low for dining comfortably, so we looked around some more, this time downstairs. There's another bar at the foot of the stairs and another sitting and dining area. After a little musing Audrey thought she preferred the upstairs, so we took a table by the fire.

What this walkabout made clear is that The Ely is a wine bar. The tables are not set as dining tables unless you decide you want to eat. You can come in here and have a glass of wine and nothing else. What they've done is allow any table to be used either for sitting and sipping wine, or for eating. It makes for a comfortable and casual feel, which I found very much to my liking. We were handed our menus, which are simple cards, and a wine list which is long, printed on heavy paper, and nicely bound. You need time for this list; there's a large choice of wines by the glass and a large choice by the bottle. Most regions of most wine-producing countries are represented, some with a dozen or more wines. They're reasonably marked up, so £20 buys you a good wine. After what seemed like ages I got to the end of the list, was pretty impressed, and finally chose a Brown Brothers Chardonnay from Australia at £18.

The menu is fairly simple but has some interesting offerings. The word 'organic' features prominently on this menu - starters include things like soup of the day at £2.95, a selection of breads with organic olive oil and rock salt at £3.95, chicken liver and brandy pate at £4.95, smoked salmon pate, oven baked plum tomato, roast breast of duck salad, Glencarn organic black pudding all at £5.95 and a half-dozen Kilkee Atlantic oysters £7.95. Main courses included organic linguini with tomato and black olives at £7.95, banger and mash with an organic pork sausage at £7.95, traditional Irish stew with organic lamb at £8.50 and a cheeseburger made with beef 'from our own farm' priced at £9.95.

Since Audrey doesn't eat red meat, she chose the oysters to start and the linguine to follow, while I picked the salmon pate and the burger - after all, who can resist a phrase like 'from our own farm'? I asked about that, and found out that the organic farm was in Wicklow, but nothing more specific than that. We sipped on our wine and looked around. The fireplace is decorated with bottles of fine champagnes like Krug, Roederer Cristal and La Grande Dame. The walls had art nouveau posters of port and the music was to my liking, which is as well, because if you didn't like it you'd find it hard to ignore.

When the starters arrived we'd built up a bit of an appetite. I was admiring the fat, succulent oysters on Audrey's plate and clearly there was a beseeching look on my face, because she kindly said 'All right, have one,' which I did, in return for a little salmon pate on a charcoal biscuit. The salmon pate was good, but very buttery, so I thought I'd give my liver a break and eat only half. The main courses were equally acceptable, although my Italian grandmother would have balked at a tomato sauce that wasn't reduced. Still, it pleased Audrey who was eating it, and I enjoyed my burger, which came on a bed of mash.

We decided to share a dessert and there were two that took our fancy; a meringue roulade and a chocolate pudding. Our waiter helpfully suggested that he could give us a taste of the two of them, which seemed like a good idea. I enjoyed both of these and we finished with two well made coffees.

What you get in The Ely is a comfortable atmosphere, a wide choice of wines and good, solid - perhaps unremarkable food - at reasonable prices. A bill for £56.90 means that I'll certainly be going back.