The harbour at Howth is probably one of the last places near Dublin where you can still see fishing boats. All along the pier are the fishmongers' outlets where fresh fish can be bought. It's the sort of place that our Mediterranean neighbours would go wild for - real fresh fish straight from the boats. Perhaps that's something that's not as appreciated here as it is on the continent, but I had both my mother and my wife with me, both of whom are passionate consumers of fish. A sudden flurry of rain drove us off the pier and into 'The Bloody Stream', which is part of the Wright Group, one of Howth's big wholesalers of fish. Wet and cold we found a table by an open turf fire, warm and inviting.

The Bloody Stream is a bar that serves food. By this I mean it has a proper menu both for dinner and lunch, the interior is laid out more like a restaurant than a pub and it carries restaurant prices, rather than pub prices, on its bill of fare. The interior is very long, rather dark in a comfortable sort of way, and the décor is heavy on the wood. Some of the flooring is made of stone flags - a response, I learnt, to the occasional flooding by the eponymous stream itself, which flows right under the building.

So there we were, warm and comfy, an appetite brought on by the sea air, and for the two ladies at least, a longed-for feast of fish in the offing. While they discussed how great it was to be able to eat fish straight out of the sea, I started with the wine list, which is quite short, but has the benefit of being reasonably priced. I chose a Chilean Chardonnay, the Vina Carmen, at €17.50 and we each had a small bottle of mineral water.

There were six starters, a soup of the day at €3.75, a sea-food chowder at €4.45, garlic mushrooms at €6.25, a smoked salmon plate at €7.55, a bowl of steamed mussels - large at €8.80, or small at €6.25 - and barbecue wings at €7. The fish dishes offered a sea-food platter at €17.75; an open prawn sandwich at €12.65; a prawn, crabmeat and smoked salmon sandwich at €12.65; a darne of Boyne salmon at €11.35; battered cod at €10.05 and catch of the day - plaice - at €10.05. There are meat dishes too for carnivores, and they're mostly priced between €8 and €10.

We sipped our water and wine, as we had a rather long wait before the arrival of our starters; nothing for mother, smoked salmon for Susie and mussels for me. A while later the bread arrived, which was just as well for me, since my starter was inedible. In five years of doing this job I've never sent a dish back, but this was exceptional. I'd guess the mussels had been steamed hours beforehand and been kept warm, ensuring that they'd lost all their moisture content, had shrunk to nothing and had hard, brown skins. Credit where it's due, they took it off the bill. So that's why I turned my attention to the bread - and on picking up the ramekin of butter, I found it had arrived already started, which isn't what you'd like to see. If a comment is needed on the smoked salmon, I can tell you it was fine.

Another long wait before the remnants of the starters were removed and the arrival of the main courses. Mother's battered cod and chips was exactly what you'd expect, although even my mother's bird-like appetite wasn't satisfied with the portion of fish, buried under a thick batter. Meanwhile Susie discovered that the 'catch of the day' was also crumbed and deep-fried. A thick, very overcooked crust, enclosed a positively tiny piece of plaice. Since the crust was overcooked to the point of inedibility, you won't be surprised to learn that what little fish there was, was also overcooked and spoiled. But what about the chips, I hear you ask, surely they made a dent in our appetite? Well they might have done, had they been cooked, but as it was their hard insides defeated even my sturdy teeth.

You'll notice that I've been saving my own main course for a separate paragraph. Remember, this was a €17.75 main course at lunchtime, a price that'll buy you a three-course lunch in many city centre restaurants. The same fish-shaped glass plate that had held a few slices of smoked salmon for Susie's starter, was put before me. On it I found one solitary oyster, six mussels - I swear, I could picture the chef trying to find the six least ruined mussels in the warming pot, with the waitress saying 'It's for that man who sent them back as a starter' - a scoop of watery, tasteless crabmeat that even the little sachets of mayonnaise on the table couldn't save, and some prawns already in a bland, commercial mayonnaise. What I thought were onion rings, sitting on the few leaves of lettuce that served as a lone garnish to this offering, turned out to be squid rings. Has nobody told the kitchen here that squid is skinned prior to cooking? It's hard enough to cook it and make it tender, but if you leave the skin on, the task's impossible.

Exactly two hours after we'd come in so optimistically, our main courses were cleared away. The fault here was not with the service - our waitress did her best to salvage the unsalvageable - it's with the incompetent kitchen and with a management that believes you can charge this sort of money for tiny portions of badly prepared food. €76.80 including service settled the bill. Bloody Stream? Bloody awful.