In the late seventies and the early eighties, when I was running my restaurant in the Wicklow Hills, I had the good fortune to work with an extraordinary chef called Humphrey Weightman. He was one of those multi-hyphenates: a chef, a graphics designer, a Cambridge graduate and a fine musician. He was, by common acclaim, much ahead of his time. Recently I was looking through some of his menus from the eighties and it's surprising to see how much of what he was doing then has now become commonplace. A lot of my taste in food has been influenced by him. I hadn't seen him for a long time - he's been around the world doing a variety of jobs, none of them involving cooking. This week he was visiting Ireland briefly, so there seemed no better way to catch up on old times than to have lunch together, especially when someone else was doing the work.

I'll admit that I had a devious plan; I wanted to go to a particular restaurant with Humphrey that I've always felt was pretentious and over-priced. That way there would be two opinions to puncture the pomposity. Like all best laid plans, this one came unstuck when we arrived and found the restaurant booked to capacity - proving that not everyone shares my views. So it was back to the car and a drive into Dalkey to try the recently opened 'Nosh'.

'Nosh' is as unpretentious as its name would lead you to believe. It's bright and airy, it has big mirrors on the walls and there are skylights as well, adding to the bright feel. It has plain wooden tables and white moulded plastic chairs, which are fine for lunch, but mightn't be so comfy for a long dinner. As it happens there are padded benches around the walls, so we picked a corner table that allowed us both the luxury of sitting in comfort. There are some nice touches in the tableware; a simple flower, good cutlery and a glass block on which the butter was served.

While we were looking at the menu, which is fairly short, we were brought some breads. About the only cooking Humphrey does these days is baking bread, so he was nibbling at his tomato bread and looking pensive. 'Caraway,' he said after a bit. 'That's a really good choice of flavouring.' He paused. 'Simple and effective.' He was right, the caraway seed gave the bread an interesting hint of something different. We both share the same philosophy on flavours: too many in a dish can leave the palate bewildered. Good chefs know this and use few flavours, but select them with care.

After looking at the menu for a while we both came to same conclusion: this is a safe menu. Plenty of mod-med stuff like grilled vegetables, rocket, goats cheese, bruschetta, plus a hint of Thai, but nothing too demanding in the kitchen. Unusually the menu isn't divided into starters and main courses, so in a way you're encouraged to simply pick what you feel like eating and not necessarily have a three course lunch. It's a short menu, so we had to choose carefully to have different starters and main courses. Humphrey chose the goats' cheese bruschetta and I had the Caesar salad, then he chose the calves' liver and bacon, which he asked for 'lightly cooked.' I picked the home made burger.

The wine list is short as well, but at least it's reasonably priced and it lists as many quarter bottles as it does halves, which is nice to see. It's still a mystery to me how Sancerres and Pouilly Fumes now cost more than Chablis, but I'll put that down to market forces. From the middle bracket of the wines I picked a Italian Pinot Grigio, which was priced at £16.50.

The starters arrived and Humphrey put his palate to work. He liked the bruschetta, grilled enough not to go soggy and he liked the layer of pesto that sat beneath the cheese. He also felt that a lot of salady bits surrounding it did nothing to improve the dish. My Caesar salad was a tasty enough, but Thai-spiced chicken strips are far from a normal addition to this otherwise standard starter.

'Good, so far,' said the Humph, 'but it'll be interesting to see what they do with liver.' Like squid, liver is difficult to cook. Do it wrong, and all those memories of school food come unhappily flooding back. It was Humphrey who got me started liking offal - although these days I'm a deal more circumspect about eating it. Liver, kidneys, sweetbreads and brains were all things he cooked brilliantly. I had a feeling he was going to be a hard judge.

When the main courses arrived they were nicely presented on large white plates. I cut my burger in half and it had all the hallmarks of home-made and was served with big chips, just like the ones you used to get before extruded potatoes became a fixture. 'Mmph,' said Humph. 'Look.' He'd cut his liver and it was cooked just like a school dinner. Sliced too thick and too long on the flame, and it had gone dry, dense and hard, which is a pity, because when it's cooked just right it's delicious.

We talked a lot and enjoyed the wine, which we accompanied with a bottle of mineral water, I finished my burger with pleasure and Humphrey made brave inroads into the liver on his plate, more out of politeness I suspect, than anything else. Neither of us wanted a dessert so we finished with espressos, which were served in shot glasses. This was possibly the best espresso I'd had outside Naples; strong, dark, and with a crema on top so thick that it held the sugar for a long time before it sank. It was so good I asked for another. Maybe the second was made by another hand, but it wasn't the spectacular offering that the first was, proving once again that consistency is the goal that's most difficult to achieve in a restaurant.

Perhaps Humphrey was a little unlucky with his choice. Nosh is a nice place with friendly service. It's not expensive, either. Without the wine we'd spent £16 a head, which is fair enough. It's the sort of place and menu that would make it a good choice for a ladies' lunch - a point already understood by several all female tables that surrounded us. The total bill came to £48.45.