Since this was the week of the Thai New Year, I shouldn't have been surprised to find myself eating two Thai meals on two consecutive days - well, I shouldn't have been surprised, but since I never remember to look in a diary, I was. Nothing to complain about, mind you, Thai is one of my favourite cuisines. My friend Dillie Keane tells me that my liking for Thai food is a genetic disposition. She maintains that Italians and Thais have much in common; they both live in beautiful countries, they both enjoy good weather, they both love physical beauty and good food. 'The Thais,' says Dillie, 'are the Italians of the East.' Maybe so. Anyway, my over-indulgence in Thai food happened like this: kindly readers from time to time email me with suggestions for good places to eat, and some time ago I was told about a good Thai restaurant in Carlow town. Now that the days are longer and the weather is increasingly clement, a drive to Carlow seemed more of a pleasure than a penance.

With that odd insistence of synchronicity it was also my week for tigers and dragons, which seem to fit quite well with the week's Eastern theme. First I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', then on the way to Carlow my wife and I drove past the set of 'Reign of Fire' on the Wicklow Gap - which is a movie about dragons - and finally, arriving in Carlow, we looked for The Weeping Thaiger. It was a classic; pulling in at the side of the road to ask a passer-by for directions and getting the reply 'It's there, right in front of you.' So it was, opposite the castle ruins, which appear to be getting a make-over at the moment.

Quite smart outside, inside it's a little Spartan, with smallish wooden tables surrounded by hard wooden chairs and a wooden floor. The walls are enlivened with oils of Thai scenes, but apart from them there's little by way of decoration. We settled in at a table and began to turn the many pages of the menu. It's a long menu and is priced very reasonably. All the starters are between £3.50 and £4.50 and include spring rolls, savoury toast with marinated minced pork, Thai salad, crispy rice cakes, deep-fried parcels of duck, sweetcorn in crispy batter, chicken Satay and wontons. Four soups, five curries, chef's specialities, lamb dishes, fish dishes and chicken dishes are just some of what's on offer. Most of the main courses are in and around £8, which is hardly expensive.

The wine list is also reasonably priced and lists about twenty wines, mostly in the under £20 bracket. There's a lot of wines that you'll find on many restaurant wine lists, like Jamieson's Run and Macon Lugny, which makes it feel accessible with no surprises. However being in Oriental mode this night, I was very much in the mood for beer, and since Singha Thai beer was on offer at £2.95 a bottle, I looked no further and Susie joined me on the beer.

Apart from the menu there are no concessions to the Orient; the tables are set with a fork and spoon, so I had no chance to show off my recently acquired skills with chopsticks. I'd chosen the expensive starter, the one where you get a taste of everything, and Susie had chosen the 'Golden Balls', which are little filled filo pastry packets. A lot of the different tastes on my plate were deep-fried, which made them very tasty although a little filling, and that was true of the 'Golden Balls' as well.

As we waited for the main courses we looked around us. It seems that the demographics of Carlow aren't much different from Dublin. Of the twenty-six people dining in the restaurant only four were male. I know I've mentioned this phenomenon before, but it is peculiar to Ireland. We began to take guesses as to where the men might be. Working? In the pub? At home watching the match whilst baby-sitting? I'd be grateful for any explanation.

For main courses Susie had ordered a medium lamb curry with noodles as a side order, and I'd chosen the 'Weeping Thaiger' from the 'chef's specials' - well, you would, wouldn't you? That turned out to be sliced marinated fillet of beef sizzling on a cast-iron platter in quantities that would have made the most Brobdingnagian appetite blanch. I really did have a moment of wondering if I could finish it, there was so much meat on my dish, but with the help of a bottle of water and sheer diligence I made it, although my egg-fried rice remained virtually untouched. Susie was having a similar struggle. Having finished her curry, she made almost no inroads into her noodles. Both of these were very good dishes.

But what had been most remarkable throughout this meal was the service. The manager or maitre was quite simply top rate. Charming and polite, he was attentive and totally on the ball. Turns out that he's just come from one of those five-star hotels in Dubai, so when I heard that the quality of the service began to make sense. There's something completely relaxing about being in a restaurant where you know you're in the hands of a real professional. Everything seems to happen effortlessly. It's unfortunate, but this level of skill is rarer in Ireland than it ought to be, and it's often the case that when you do find someone that has it, they're not native.

There's another similarity between Italian and Thai cuisine; they're both heavily weighted toward savoury. The menu in 'The Weeping Thaiger' almost makes a virtue of this, the only dessert listed in Haagen Dazs ice-cream in a variety of flavours. I know we were full, but we managed one between us. I was especially happy to find that not only did they do espressos, they were made with 'Illy' coffee, which has to be the best you can get. A bill for £53.55 not including service seemed a small price to pay for a good meal.

And my other Thai meal? Lunch the next day hosted by Mathew Farrell in Diep Le Shaker. A royal Thai banquet to celebrate the new year with a dozen or so courses of exquisite food and Veuve Clicquot 1995 to help it down, plus the Madfish Bay Chardonnay. Hopefully all this is a foretaste of new years to come. If next year's Thai celebrations are as good as this, it'll be something to look forward to.