The advent of the Euro has had a number of obvious effects, the most obvious being an increase in prices. It occurred to me that restaurants may also have increased their prices so I thought I'd check. It's been a bore and time-consuming, but I've gone through all my receipts from first six months of last year and those from this year over the same period just to see what difference there was. Here's the surprise; there's a difference of about 1.5%, which is a good deal less than inflation. I'm not a statistician, and perhaps six months isn't a large enough sample to balance out the expensive and the cheap meals, but I was expecting a much greater increase than that. Maybe I'll try the exercise again at the end of the year.

The other obvious effect of the euro is that now we can make direct price comparisons with other countries in the euro zone and ask 'why is it so expensive here?' Restaurant prices may not have risen much in my sample, but they're still more expensive on average than they are in France or Italy. Why this might be the case was one of the subjects over dinner in the Baan Thai, which I shared with fellow restaurant reviewer Alan Stanford. We came up with a couple of answers; raw ingredients cost more in Ireland than they do on the continent for a start (why this is so could be the subject of a long discussion in itself) and VAT is higher, but that accounts for only a percentage of the cost of a meal. When you think about it, the difference lies more in the cheaper end of the market than it does at the top end. A two-star Michelin meal costs less in Ireland than it does on the continent; it's the bistro/brasserie/trattoria meal that's more expensive here.

I have a theory that might just explain this. On the continent there's been a long tradition of eating in restaurants, here it's a relatively new phenomenon. What that means in practice is that a lot of bistros/brasseries/trattorie are often in the hands of a third or fourth generation scion. You can be sure that the building has long been paid for, the original start-up costs are but a dim memory, mortgages forgotten and bank loans non-existent. The lack of that overhead coupled with a big turnover of customers means that prices are kept low and the restaurateurs still make a good living. Starting a restaurant from scratch these days is horrendously expensive and can only be done on borrowed money. The end user - that's you and me - ultimately pays the bill.

But back to the Baan Thai. There are places in Dublin where restaurants gather like rooks in an elm - Temple Bar, Monkstown Crescent and Ballsbridge spring to mind. And by Ballsbridge I don't mean Dublin 4, I mean Mr. Ball's bridge itself. Within a hundred yards of it there's a rake of restaurants, one of which is the Baan Thai and it lives on the first and second storey above number 16 of the Merrion Road. Up the carpeted stairs we went and found the first floor already filled to capacity. A second flight, and then two somewhat over-weight gourmands arrived our table by the window in a room that filled up shortly afterwards.

The menus in Thai restaurants are always fun. It's the phonetic transliteration of the Thai language into our alphabet that tends to give me childish giggles. See-Krong Mu Tord, Gang Dang, Pla Sam Rod and Goong Nang can all be found on the menu (thankfully followed by an English translation), but you can't help yourself, really you can't, trying to make up some new ones of the school-boy smut variety. Anyway, once we'd exhausted this particularly rich vein, we decided to try one of the set meals for two which gives you a taste of various dishes. There were a couple to choose from and we picked the Pattaya option. This is of a platter of starters including spring rolls, deep fried prawns, deep fried wontons and skewered chicken with a peanut sauce, followed by two main courses - Gai Preaw Wan and a Beef Gang Kiew Wan, which are sweet and sour chicken and a green curry with beef. A bowl of fried rice came with it.

The wine list, somewhat longer than you'd expect and well-priced, went backwards and forwards between us, until Alan persuaded me to try a red from New Zealand, a country from where I normally select white. It was an Esk Valley Merlot/Cabernet blend and it had more fruit than I would have suspected. Our other drink for the night was plain iced water and the steel jug was kept filled throughout the evening by the attentive staff.

Three of the starters were deep-fried - the prawns, the wontons and the spring rolls. They were all tasty enough, but the taste was marred somewhat by the cooking oil which had done more work than any oil should be required to do. A slightly rancid aftertaste nearly spoiled them, but both Alan and I were delighted with the chicken skewers and the peanut sauce, which was as good as I've tasted.

The main courses arrived promptly afterwards and we found ourselves once more in agreement; a truly delicious beef green curry that had just the right amount of fire to excite the taste buds and a rather bland sweet and sour chicken that came with the perennial glaze but not much else. It was Alan who remembered a bit on the menu which said 'Thai cooking will stimulate all aspects of the taste buds: sweet, sour, salty bitter and neutral', so clearly the chicken was designed for the last of these.

Neither of us had a dessert, but despite some reservations we felt we'd eaten well, been served professionally and a bill of €84.48 seemed fair enough.