There's a Europe-wide phenomenon that you may be aware of; it's the Irish pub. Every European city that I've visited from Scandinavia to Germany to Mediterranean Europe has its Irish pubs. It might not be a pub like we know them here, but they tend to have lots of theming in the shamrock and turf vein - you know the sort of thing: butter-churns, donkey-cart wheels, portraits of James Joyce, pictures of whitewashed thatched cottages, diddly-eye jigs as background music and plenty of the drink that defines the Irish pub abroad, Gweeness. So pervasive is this phenomenon that even in the backwater of my Italian valley there's an Irish pub in a village of 600 people.

From the foreign perspective the Irish pub differs from their own home-grown variety of bar in that it's supposed to be a place where people are friendly towards one another. The Irish pub abroad is seen as a place of conversational interaction, a place where all those images that Bord Failte so carefully nurture in foreign publications can be found for real. In cruel reality, of course, that's not the case at all, but none the less they're often more fun to be in than the others. But in a way these themed Irish pubs are stuck in some sort of time-warp, they're epigones of the sort of pub that would be increasingly rare in the Ireland of today. The pub of the sawdust scattered floor, the smell of stale beer hanging heavily in the air and outside urinals reeking of urine is not something so readily found any more.

Here the Irish pub has gone through a major metamorphosis of late. Firstly you can get wine now. Increasingly pubs are offering a wide choice of wine by the glass or quarter bottles. Often you can also get a decent coffee from an espresso machine, but the single biggest change is in the food on offer. Not so long ago your choice was a cheese sandwich, a ham sandwich or a ham and cheese sandwich. In a few pubs you could even have them toasted. But beyond that, if you were still hungry, all you could have was a bag of crisps or peanuts. Until recently I thought of pubs as places you went to only for a drink, but slowly I'm changing my mind. A recent visit to Palmers in Kilternan confirmed this change for me.

I was with Michael Lowsley, as big a man as you could meet. There's a touch of the Little and Large when we're out together, with him towering over me, a Goliath to my Tom Thumb. We meet often enough during the shooting season and lunch in Palmers, his erstwhile local, was his idea. Palmers has gone through major changes in the past few years and the décor is now a toned-down version of the sort of Irish pub you'd find abroad. In the car park there's a ruiniste theme and inside it has all the bric-a-brac of brass and wood and books on shelves, but it's understated enough to be almost tasteful. It's a big place with interconnecting rooms as well as a separate restaurant, but the big man and I decided to eat at a table in the bar area.

There's a wine list with thirty or so wines with a couple of wines breaking the £20 barrier, but nearly all under £20. There are good wines on it for under £15, like the Wolf Blass Sauvignon and Rosemount's Chardonnay, so the mark up is reasonable. Eleven house wines are available by the glass, or for £12.52 a bottle, which was tempting enough, but we decided instead to be traditional and drink beer.

The bar food menu is a large laminate, the covers of which are filled with photographs of people who I presume have been here. Sportsmen, jockeys, clerics and politicians make a cross-section Irish life, reinforcing the theme of the Irish pub as a meeting place. It's a lot more main stream than the restaurant menu, which has some innovative and interesting looking dishes on it, but there's enough on it to please a wide range of tastes. Apart from starters and main courses there are steaks, salads, a range of fancy sandwiches, burgers and a children's' menu. As a price guide most of the starters are under £4, the main courses under £8 and the steaks run from £11.25 to £15.50.

To start with the big fella chose Thai-style Tiger prawns and followed with a large 14 ounce T-bone steak and all the trimmings - onion rings, mushrooms and cheese and garlic potatoes. Reluctantly I realised I couldn't keep up with this, but rather manfully, I thought, I chose deep-fried brie as a starter and a slightly less intimidating 12 ounce sirloin steak.

You'll notice that none of what we ordered could be described as 'haute cuisine', but then again that's not what we came here for. What endeared me to this bar food was its quality - quality of ingredients and quality of preparation. Just because a recipe isn't complicated doesn't mean it will done well. In fact, sometimes it's the easiest things that go most wrong. So it was with pleasure that I ate my deep-fried brie, tasted Michael's prawns and worked my way slowly through my large and tender piece of beef. It's nice occasionally to eat like this; simple unpretentious food that's properly prepared. You could argue that it doesn't really test the chef, but I think it does. If simple things are done with care, it's a fair bet the more complicated dishes will be as well.

There are desserts on offer again picked for simplicity, like fudge cake, apple pie and chocolate sundae, but both Michael and I were unable to continue. I finished with an espresso which was good enough to get me to order another. The bill, including the beers but excluding service, came to £54.95.