Until last week I was under the impression that restaurant reviewers held much in common; that we agreed on the very good and the very bad, but differed on the ranking of the in betweens. Imagine my surprise to find myself at odds with the Tribune's Tom Doorley, a writer that I've always respected. The point at issue is one worth elaborating, even though it's a point I've raised it before. Tom had a meal in a restaurant that he found less than satisfactory, and the restaurant has a framed copy of a review by me extolling their pizzas. At the time of my review, the pizzas were made by Gianni Brandi, a descendant of the famous Neapolitan family who were responsible for creating the pizza 'Margherita'. Tom and his guest didn't actually eat pizzas, but none the less he felt that I should be roasted on a 'Stygian barbecue'(1) for giving the place a good review.

There are two issues here that need answering and they're these; firstly I confined my praise to the pizzas; secondly, and more importantly, the review was written three years ago. If I had a good pizza there three years ago, why should anyone assume, especially a restaurant reviewer, that nothing has changed? Was there the same chef? Is the management the same? The staff? Does it even have the same owners? To assume that nothing changes in three years is so sublimely naïve that my respect for Mr. Doorley has taken a bit of a nose-dive. So just for Tom, in the hope that a modicum of classical education may have come his way before his Nestorian years, here's my response in an equally classical vein: 'Aquila non captat muscas'(2), a Latin tag that has always appealed to me.

This week I went a-reviewing with my sister-in-law Gilly Morley. Gallant as ever, I left the choice of venue to her, with the sole proviso that it had to be somewhere I hadn't been to before. Her solution was 'Greens', which is a restaurant on the first floor of The Leopardstown Inn. It occurs to me that I have, in the past, divided restaurants into two kinds, those in hotels and those that stand alone. Actually that needs revising, because like Gaul, restaurants can be divided into three - those two that I've mentioned and the kind that are part of a pub. The advantage that the pub restaurant has is that it can be somewhere that mightn't be able to support a stand-alone restaurant - and in many cases the suburbs fit that pattern.

The Leopardstown Inn is a big place and it swarms with people. You get to the restaurant, Greens, up a flight of stairs just inside the door. At the top you find the dining room, which is spread out through three or more sections and on this Wednesday night it was very busy. The décor is, I suspect, designed to create the ambience of a mediaeval banqueting hall, there's wrought ironwork abounding and even something that looks vaguely like a portcullis that acts as a divider between two of the rooms. Yet it's a warm buzzy, friendly sort of room and I wouldn't be surprised if it has a large core of regulars.

With the menus came a bread and a jug of iced water, which makes for a good start as far as I'm concerned. The menu is a laminated sheet and it has exactly the kind of dishes that you'd expect it to have: starters include a shrimp cocktail, liver pate, deep-fried mushrooms, deep-fried Brie, Caesar salad and black pudding - stalwart dishes all, and priced around the €6 mark. For main courses you could pick salmon steak, fillet of beef in medallions, duckling, supreme of chicken and fillets of plaice, which apart from the beef are all in the €15-€18 range. Nothing here to startle, but on the other hand, nothing here that can go seriously wrong either. In situations like this I'm tempted to have steak and chips and a pint of beer, but the thought that that wouldn't translate easily into a thousand words stops me. No beer then, but a look through the wine list instead. It's a reasonable list and it's fairly priced, which does seem to be the case more often than not in pub restaurants. After a little perusing and I picked a white for Gilly, a Montes Reserva Chardonnay from Chile, which was listed at €23.

We began with a good Caesar salad for Gill and the fried brie for me. I've been reading a lot this week about the carcinogenic effects of fried foods, so this may be the last I'll pick for a while - either that or I'll give up reading. No need to describe these in any detail, both were competently done and well presented.

Gilly eats no meat, so she'd picked a special on the night, sole on the bone while I'd chosen the roast crispy duckling. The main courses come with a choice of potato and we'd ordered a selection of vegetables as well, which turned out to be green beans, cauliflower, broccoli and mange-touts - rather overdone for my taste. The sole was a large one, rather more than Gilly's bird-like appetite could cope with, but she made good headway. I enjoyed my duck too; crispy just as described. We finished off our meal with a strawberry cheesecake between us; a somewhat gelatinous one that we left most of.

Throughout the meal we had pleasant and efficient service and I was happy to find that an espresso was a possibility, so I had one. Greens offer you plain, but decent food and at €88.05 for two it's very much in the affordable range.

(1) A clever, but hardly workable, reference to the river Styx, aimed at smart people with a classical education.
(2) A much cleverer riposte.