As I sit down to write this the papers are full once more with the annual brouhaha over the Bridgestone Guide and its omissions and inclusions. The Sunday Turbine gave a whole page to it, rather more space than I would have thought it merited. Three writers express their views; Tom Doorley gives his informed and informative comments on the guide's wilful idiosyncrasy; Fiona Looney makes a well-argued case in favour of restaurant reviews and Diarmud Doyle gets the stick entirely by the wrong end. Somewhere along the line of his reasoning he either deliberately blurs the distinction between a restaurant review and a restaurant guide, or he is unaware of any difference between the two. Fact is, they couldn't be more different.

A guide entry is, or ought to be, an opinion based on several visits to a restaurant either by one or by many people. It takes into account the vagaries and the variations that are inevitable in a business where the variables are many. In short, it's supposed to be a balanced assessment. A restaurant review, on the other hand, is a snap-shot of a single meal on a single night. Diarmud Doyle suggests that reviewers should go at least twice to a restaurant before offering an opinion. What world is he living in? Does he know of a newspaper that would pay for two or more meals to get one review? It doesn't take a Gargantuan intelligence to understand that if you want a balanced and well-sampled opinion on a restaurant, buy a guide. If you want to read about a single meal and savour it vicariously, read a restaurant review. They're different things; discrete and distinct. To bundle them together and argue from the synthesis is, quite simply, to make a category mistake.

Right. I've had my say on that, and now on to a restaurant review. And, nota bene, it's a one-off snapshot of a late night meal. I'll start by telling you something about the business end of restaurant reviewing. Sometimes it can be hard to get to somewhere that you actually want to review. Either the place is full up on the night you're free, or as was the case this week, other events interpose. My wife and I had gone to The Gate for the opening of Bash, a fine piece of theatre consisting of three monologues written and directed by Neil la Bute. By the time it had ended and we'd delivered the deserved plaudits in the bar after the show, my restaurant of choice had long since ceased to take orders. Instead, a quarter-pounder with cheese and a single of chips from Cinelli's take away across the road from the Gate, was our supper to eat in the car on the way home. See me? I'm a gourmet, me. Ah well, nil desperandum, I thought, I'm back in Dublin in two days time for a concert in HQ given by my old pal and my son's Florentine landlord, Antonio Breschi - or Antoni O'Bresky as he now likes to call himself in Ireland. 'We'll find a restaurant after the concert,' I explained to my wife.

By the time Antonio had performed his second encore to a standing ovation, once more the clock had beaten us. What's a chap to do when he's got a deadline? More to the point, where do you eat after midnight in this thriving capital of ours? In London it's easy - The Ivy. But here I've already reviewed most of the late-night haunts. Thoughts tumbled rapidly through my mind. Can't do Friday, and Saturday we've got guests for dinner. Sunday it is, then, to catch a Monday deadline. 'Can we do Sunday lunch as a review?' I asked my wife. I got the impression she wasn't keen. 'Do we have to?' was her less than enthusiastic response. We were heading Wicklow-wards when she had one of those epiphanies of inspiration. 'Stop in Stillorgan. We'll eat in Eddie Rocket's.' It certainly solved the immediate problem of nagging hunger.

I vaguely remembered stopping there once some years ago after a long night in Dublin, and in those vague memories it seemed clean and welcoming. Acres of empty shopping-centre car park makes parking there a doddle. We walked into a diner that could have come from a Norman Rockwell painting. It's fifties retro, shiny naugahide banquettes surround laminated tables, fifties design features abound - there's even a jukebox controller on each table, which the menu assures you, works. I couldn't get it to work, but the sixties hits that are the choices played loudly anyway. Remember the diner in Back to the Future? That's the feel the designers have been going for.

The menu is an A4 card in a laminate and one side tells you in large letters 'OPEN IN LIFFEY VALLEY AND GRAN CANARIA', which are two places I wouldn't have thought of putting in the same sentence. The other side is the menu proper, which starts with eight burgers, then four different fries, deluxe plates, salads and sandwiches, dogs and nachos, and finally desserts. Between these listings there are jokey comments and a little box exhorting you to 'EAT & GET OUT!', which is as honest a declaration of intent from a fast food outlet as I've seen.

Susie ordered a chicken fillet burger with a bottle of mineral water, and I ordered the 'Cheese Please' burger and a large Coke to complete my Trans-Atlantic experience. Oddly the burgers in Eddie Rockets are one-third of a pound, which by my calculations means that they're five-and-a-third ounces. Quickly, just as you'd expect, our order arrived. And frankly, it was good. It wasn't just the pangs of hunger making it taste good, although I'm sure that helped, it was the good bun, fresh salad leaves, good mayonnaise and nicely seasoned burger that did it. We also had a bowl of cheese fries to pick at, which were chips covered in a thick yellow sauce that wasn't wholly unlike melted cheddar. I finished them all.

Nothing would persuade Susie to a dessert, not even the temptingly named New York toffee cheese cake - in fact she wouldn't even have a coffee. So after we'd eaten, we got out. The bill is probably the smallest I've ever paid for a review meal, £12.70, but this simple fare hit exactly the right spot for two hungry people late at night. It seems on Fridays and Saturdays they're open until 4am, which is late enough for most, I'd suspect.