This has been a heavy week of gastronomy, the sort of liver-crippling week that puts your constitution to the test. Don't let anyone tell you that the life of a bon viveur, a boulevardier and a gourmand is easy - it can be tough. Never tougher than at the tenth anniversary dinner of Chapter One, when guests were forced to eat course after course of wonderful food and then made to drink vintage Moet et Chandon champagne before they were allowed to leave. See what I mean? That's the sort of thing you have to subject yourself to if you want to be a foodie. A meal like that can set you up for a week, but there was even more fine food and wine to be tasted at the annual CERT 'Young Ireland Dine and Wine Competition' where four teams from around the country competed in the finals. You have to be in training for stuff like this and you need an appetite that never abates, but it was made easier by the very high standard of all the teams. It's deeply encouraging to know that there's a lot of fine, young enthusiastic and talented chefs out there.

The turnover of new restaurants replacing old ones shows no sign of letting up, and it's a recent example of this that I set off to visit with my guest, Ciara Cronin. What used to be Cooper's in Greystones has now become Opresco, which if you haven't spotted it, is an anagram of 'Cooper's' that sounds vaguely like a dry-cleaners. If you enjoy word games it's also an anagram of 'sore cop' and 'O! Corpse', which a little scribbling on a piece of paper revealed between courses. It also turned my guest into 'circa no rain', 'an ironic arc' and 'I can carrion'. Anyway, wordplay apart, Opresco overlooks the harbour in Greystones and on the night we were there a star-speckled sky reflected prettily in a calm sea. It's upstairs, above a pub, but does have its own entrance. Lots of stone, brick, wood and stained glass create the decor's leitmotif. The roof is high and gabled and the room was pleasantly warm when we arrived inside from a blowy and drizzly car park.

It's nicely lit and because it was warm and comfortable the expanses of brick and stone worked well - if the room is cold they only aggravate the effect. We sat by the window and thought about our food and wine while enjoying the view. There are two menus to choose from, an a la carte and a table d'hote, which is priced at €20. The wine list isn't elaborate, but it does have a reasonable selection of wines from around the world and they're reasonably priced. Ciara is normally a white wine drinker, but she was feeling adventurous and asked me to choose a red that might change her mind about them. With not a lot of reds to choose from I settled on the Plaisir de Merle Merlot from South Africa, a wine that has never disappointed me, and it was fairly priced at just under €30.

The set dinner menu gives you a choice of three courses; on the night there was a pate, breaded mushrooms, soup or a Caesar salad, followed by fish 'n' chips, loin of pork, tandoori chicken, vegetable crumble with seafood and a beef lasagne. The choices for dessert were toffee banoffi, ice-cream and chocolate cream cake. Most of these were on the a la carte menu, as well as Kenmare mussels, lambs' kidneys, smoked salmon, steaks, chicken curry and fish of the day. The starters were priced in the €5-€10 range and the main courses centred around the €20 mark.

Tempted as Ciara was by the salmon, we both share the opinion that the farmed beast has a fatty and flabby flesh, a far cry from the wild variety. Instead she chose the mussels to start and sole to follow, which was the fish of the day. I picked from the table d'hote and had the pate to start and then the roast loin of pork. When the starters arrived they were presented on large, generous plates and the effect was almost artistic. Thankfully the food didn't just look good, it was good. I really thought that at this stage in my life I had no new techniques to learn for eating food. How wrong I was. I watched fascinated as Ciara carefully selected a complete shell, and then used the two hinged halves like a pair of tweezers for extracting mussels from other shells and then as an eating implement. In all the years I've been eating mussels I've never seen that before, and obviously that's how I'll be doing it from now on.

The main courses were also good; Ciara's sole fillets decoratively placed on the plate and served with a simple and tasty sauce. My loin of pork was served as three slices, nicely cooked and came with a bed of Lyonnaise potatoes. We also had two side orders of another portion of Lyonnaise potatoes and green salad. Again we exchanged tasty morsels and enjoyed what we had. Looking at our choices now it's clear that none of these dishes were haute cuisine, but they were all dishes that could very easily have been done badly. As it was everything we had was nicely prepared and the service throughout the meal was excellent.

Both of us chose desserts; a creme brulee for Ciara and a simple vanilla ice-cream for me. Ciara's creme brulee was the only disappointing part of our meal; still cold from the fridge at the bottom and with a consistency more like runny custard than creme brulee. A tea for Ciara and an espresso for me finished the meal, which came to €90.16 and which I felt was good value for the meal we'd eaten.