In the theatre one of the perennial discussions is whether or not you should have a black actor to play Othello. Old hands point to Olivier's Othello, when the actor was 'blacked-up' and gave, what those who saw it said, was a brilliant performance. On the one hand is the argument that Shakespeare's Moor is quintessentially a man eaten up with jealousy and it doesn't matter one jot who plays it. The other hand argues for authenticity, saying simply that only a black actor can play a black role. I give you these arguments to ponder because it's much the same with restaurants when it comes to authenticity. Can you have a Japanese meal cooked by a Swede? An Indian meal cooked by an Irishman? The answer I suppose is 'yes', but only if the chef is very well grounded in the particular cooking that isn't indigenously his own.

Here's a case in point: there's a chipper in the city centre that I occasionally frequent - never forget I'm a gourmet - and it carries an Italian name over the door. It changed hands some time back and is now run by Chinese. So you have a chipper with an Italian name, run by Chinese, serving food that's neither Chinese nor Italian to the Irish. The cheeseburgers and chips are just as good as they ever were, so clearly in this case it doesn't make much odds who does it, as long as they do it well. But cheeseburgers and chips aren't normally considered 'cuisine' - you could teach someone the art of their preparation in less than half-an-hour. So what then of more complex cookery?

My wife and I found a little restaurant in Dundrum called 'Buona Sera' and engraved on the window it says 'Ristorante Italiano'. A quick look at the menu displayed outside showed that we'd found one of those rare things; an inexpensive restaurant. Starters between £3 and £4, some main courses for under a tenner. It's in a terraced house, and it's on two floors. When we arrived without a reservation the downstairs was already full and we sat upstairs in a simply adorned room on hard chairs at plain wooden tables. Neat and clean, it's the sort of place that prompts you to eat quickly - what Italians would call a 'trattoria'. The menus has some things you'd expect to see on the starters: bruschetta, crostini and salads (oddly no antipasto), as well as prawn cocktail, smoked salmon and chicken wings which aren't so Italian. There are pastas and pizzas, chicken dishes and a 'fish of the day', which on this day wasn't available.

Susie, denied her fish main course, decided on the prawn cocktail starter for her fish hit while I chose the 'Capri salad'. For main courses Susie suddenly went all mumsy when she saw a pizza called 'Isabella'. This is also my daughter's name and we'd just left her off to her debs. 'I'll have to have that,' said Susie, 'it's such a special night for her.' Being a tad less sentimental I chose the 'saltimbocca', a Roman speciality. The wine list is short, listing neither vintages nor shippers. It has a moderate mark-up and most of the wines are under £15, only a Barolo and an Amarone going significantly over the £20 mark. I picked a Pinot Grigio in deference to Susie and a carafe of iced water came automatically, which I approve of.

Before I become pedantic, I want to say we had a decent meal at a very reasonable price. But I had a problem and it was this: if you're going to call yourself an Italian restaurant and list on your menu traditional Italian dishes they ought to be as described. My starter, the Capri salad, is a dish that is simple, but good. It relies on its ingredients for its success. It needs ripe plum tomatoes, good mozzarella, leaves of basil and good olive oil. When you get slices of block mozzarella, dried basil and unripe tomatoes you don't have a Caprese salad. It's not a bad dish, but it's not what you'd get in Italy. Similarly with the main courses; a pizza base is basically a yeast dough with oil and salt worked into it. The base on Susie's pizza didn't have the golden colour that it ought to have had, it wasn't the right consistency, nor was it salted. It was good enough to eat, and Susie nearly finished it, but if it had arrived in Italy like that, it would have been sent back. My main course, saltimbocca, is a classic dish from Rome. Thin slices of veal, each with a slice of Parma ham and a sage leaf, are pan-fried with white wine. I'm not a complete purist - when I make it I often use pork fillet rather than veal - but what I had, although pleasant enough, was far from the dish I've described. Cooked Irish ham is not a substitute for Parma ham, sprinkled dried sage doesn't replace fresh leaves and a sauce that appeared to be based on tomatoes is quite simply wrong.

As I said, as a simple dinner it was all acceptable enough, but for me there remained a problem; anyone who has never been to Italy might assume that these dishes were examples of Italian cookery, but they aren't. I know it's hard to source ingredients in Ireland, but it's not impossible. It made me wonder about who was in the kitchen and whether they actually knew what the dishes should have been like, or were they non-Italians having a go, which prompted my initial discourse on authenticity.

'Buona Sera' is a nice little restaurant and they try hard. The service was excellent, the price is immensely reasonable and the food is fine, but on the basis of what we ate on the night I can't agree with the description of the restaurant as 'Italian'. Maybe I'm being overly picky, but like all true cosmopolitans, I get very defensive about my own personal patch of homeland. A bill for £46.05 included a tiramisu for dessert and coffee.