The most exciting white-knuckle ride I ever had was in South Africa. It was a helicopter trip that started in the Victoria and Alfred (sic) Dock of Cape Town and we flew in a long anticlockwise circle, south to the Cape of Good Hope, then up the Indian ocean side of the Cape past Simonstown, taking in the beautiful scenery, then over the two famous wineries of Constantia, Klein Constantia and Groot Constantia. So far no white knuckles. But after passing the wineries the pilot appeared to be flying us closer to the ground - through the glass bottom under my feet I watched as it came up to meet us, closer and closer, and then, with a stomach-wrenching suddenness, the ground just fell away and we were over the lip of the precipitous Table Mountain and back at Cape Town. Talk about vertigo, it's not a trip for the lily-livered. We squealed so much our kindly pilot turned round and did it all over again.

Anyway, the flight over the vineyards of Constantia prompted a trip there a few days later. It's a classic winery tour, you see the vineyards, the workings of the winery and then you get to taste the wine. Good stuff, too, the wines of Klein Constantia. So when Paul Harvey suggested a lunch with Lowell Jooste of Klein Constantia I was delighted to have the chance to relive those memories. My wife and I met Paul and Lowell in Cooper's Café in Ballsbridge, which is housed in a new building opposite the RDS. Inside it's much bigger than you'd guess from the outside, and it's a very smart room. If you arrive, as I did, with the pre-conceptions from having been in other Cooper's, the standard of the interior will come as a surprise. Also the fact that it calls itself a café is slightly misleading, insofar as it's designed very much with comfort in mind. There are comfortable padded chairs in red plush surrounding linen-covered tables, subtle subdued lighting and a pleasantly spacious feel to the room. It accomplishes that rare thing; it combines modern, clean lines with comfort.

We'd arrived a little early so I had plenty of time to look through the menu. At lunch there are two options; you can choose from the set lunch at £12.95, which I did, or you can choose off the a la carte. The set lunch started with a choice of soup of the day, a spring onion and sweetcorn tartlet and a seared salmon salad. Main courses were braised beef with red wine and cous-cous, roast cod fillet, pan-fried chicken breast with a tapinade and then a choice of ice-creams or a glazed apple gallette. Not a big choice, but enough to cater for most tastes. On the a la carte the starters were mostly around the £5 mark and included Caesar salad, rare beef salad and herb tagliatelle. Main courses were grilled sirloin steak in a choice of sauces, pan-fried chicken breast with roast garlic, medallions of pork, salmon fish cakes, calves' liver and pappardelle with braised leeks, which ranged in price from £11 to £15. Looking through that list you can see that it's carefully designed to include some basic, staple dishes as well as a few more unusual ones. In this respect it breaks the mould of other Cooper's, which rely more heavily on simple, basic dishes.

The wine list is moderately priced and begins with house wines at £13, two reds and two whites. A small listing of half bottles follows, then a couple of Champagnes, then the whites. There are more French whites on this list than is normally the case these days, including all the standards like Macon Lugny, Pouilly Fume, Sancerre, Chablis and a Gewurztraminer. There's a few Australian and a couple of Chilean wines, with odd listings of California and South Africa. The reds follow much the same pattern and like the whites, there are plenty to choose from in the under £20 bracket. Sadly there were no Klein Constantia wines listed, so we picked a Louis Latour Chardonnay at £15 and a Chateau Loudenne at £21.

Lowell started his meal with a spicy tomato soup, Paul and Susie began with the Caesar salad and I had the onion tartlet. The salads were competently done, the soup was good and I enjoyed the tartlet. In truth none of these dishes really stretch a kitchen, so I was interested to see how we'd fare on main courses. Both Paul and Susie had chosen alike again, this time the salmon cakes. Lowell had chosen the liver, which is never an easy meat to cook well, and I'd chosen the braised beef. I took a taste of Lowell's liver, which he'd asked for medium and which was exactly what he had. I prefer liver underdone, as it tends to toughen the more it's cooked, but his was nicely flavoured and well-presented. My beef dish was made up of small slivers of beef that were coated in a delicious red wine sauce, they were tender and went well with the cous-cous that accompanied it. I can't say that I enjoyed the fish cakes, and Susie was a little unenthusiastic as well. Big and generous, they were also dry and rather insipid in flavour. Thinking about it now I can't remember when I last tasted a fish cake that enthused me. Which is odd, because a simple fish cake can be delicious, and as dish it's hardly at the dizzy heights of haute cuisine. You'd have thought that a decent fish cake would be included in term one of chef school.

After all of this none of my table companions were keen on a dessert, but as I'd chosen off the set lunch a dessert was part of my deal, so I determined to have one. While I was debating which to choose, our waitress suggested a plate with a taste of everything. That seemed like such a good idea I went for it at once. What I got was one of the most appealing dessert plates that I've seen in a while, so tempting did it look that the three 'oh no, no more for me' instantly changed their minds and helped me finish it. Particularly good espressos finished the meal (turns out the barista was Italian) and I was left feeling that Cooper's do a very good job here. Good service as well. The bill for the four of us came £109.95.