Something of a gourmet week, this. It started with a dinner in the Merrion Hotel's Wellesley Room, a dining room that has been restored to its Georgian grandeur with great care and skill. Ed Cooney, their Chef de Cuisine, strutted his stuff with aplomb and we tasted Ireland's own Chateau Fieuzal, which accompanied the stylish food. A few days later I was down in Wexford enjoying wonderful Italian food in Roberto Pons' 'La Dolce Vita', where Roberto and I got into a mutual rant about the lack of Italian food in this country. A cursory glance through the Golden Pages might leave you with the impression that about half of all the restaurants in this country are Italian - there are so many that describe themselves as just that - but if you get that impression, trust me, it's not backed up by the reality on the ground.

While I was in Italy a few weeks ago, the Italian government was talking about setting up a quality control symbol, something instantly recognisable, that would tell you that an 'Italian' restaurant outside Italy uses the proper, genuine ingredients and makes food that conforms to a standard. Quite who would do the policing is as yet unclear, but the idea strikes me as a good one. Italians are very fussy about their food and they're sticklers for recipes. Italian cuisine is regional - each area basing its cuisine on its local produce - and the recipes are almost set in stone. You don't mess with them; if the recipe calls for sage you don't substitute basil. And there's a very good reason for this: if something works well, there's no need to change it. Take an analogy: if you like the taste of Coca Cola or Hellman's mayonnaise, you expect it taste the same each time you pick it off a supermarket shelf. You might go off the product quickly enough if every time there were new plant managers they took it upon themselves to change the tastes by adding more vinegar to the mayonnaise or more caramel to the drink. The recipe has to be sacrosanct, otherwise there's no consistency.

Maybe what we need in this country is a new category, the Irish-Italian restaurant. It's a category that would include nearly every Italian restaurant I've been in. It serves a fusion of some Italian names combined with local ingredients that results in a new style of cooking, distantly derived from Italian cuisine, but essentially a new product. Often it can be perfectly agreeable, just as long as you don't compare it to the authentic version. I'm not averse to Irish mozzarella, I just don't think it should be used in an Italian restaurant, no more than the oil should be anything other than olive. If a menu lists a classical dish such as 'saltimbocca alla Romana' then I want it to be Roman style, not Dublin 4 style. I want to find precision in description and execution, otherwise it should be called 'saltimbocca the way we do it'.

How would you feel about a restaurant that served Irish stew made from chicken pieces or colcannon made from stewed carrots? Apart from remarking 'that's not how my granny made it' you might feel that the dish was in breach of the trade descriptions act. Worse, visitors might choose it and go away under the impression that they'd eaten a classic Irish dish. I've heard it said often enough that the Irish consumer isn't ready for genuine Italian cuisine, but that's simply not true. When Roberto Morsiani was cooking in 'da Roberto's' in Blackrock he built up a large following by the simple expedient of making wonderful and genuine Italian food - people who tasted it liked it. Until he starts up again, it looks like the real thing is still out of the question in Dublin.

All this was reinforced when Gill Hall and I went for an early dinner in 'Little Caesar's' in Blackrock, which occupies the space once held by 'Tota'. It's in the main street and as we approached, a smell of good coffee wafted onto the pavement. Very trattoria-like inside, it was busy and buzzy. The upstairs was very full so we sat downstairs which soon filled up as well. The tables are fairly close-set and small enough that you need to be careful when placing your impedimenta. There's a short wine list with a few Italian wines as well as wines from other countries and Gill chose an unoaked Chardonnay at €24.50 for us.

Most of the starters are priced around €6 and include rice-balls, chicken wings, strips of beef in a spicy sauce, meat-balls and minestrone. There are plenty of pizzas to choose from including a calzone and lots of pasta dishes. The main courses are dominated by chicken breasts which you can have in about half a dozen different ways, there are steaks, lamb cutlets and 'dentice in cartoccio'. Puzzled by finding dentex - a Mediterranean fish - on the menu, I read on to find it translated as 'fish of the day'. It was sea-trout, but not in 'cartoccio', which means wrapped in parchment paper and cooked. Since it was neither 'dentice' nor 'in cartoccio' you'd wonder why it was described as such.

Gill started with the 'insalata Caesar', which is not a Caesar salad, but rather more similar to a Caprese salad. Sliced squares of Irish mozzarella did little to enhance it. I had the suppli, or rice balls, which were acceptable enough and for main courses Gill had the tagliatelle with a mushroom sauce which was good, but needed more reduction. I had the rack of lamb cooked nicely pink and we finished with an espresso.
Apart from the mineral water at €6.60 a litre, it's not an expensive menu. You can eat reasonably well and at reasonable money - our bill came to €78.27 - but it's a bit way away from authentic Italian cooking.