If you're one of those people who find it difficult to stick with a diet that's generally understood to be a healthy one, then we have something in common. Received wisdom is clear on this point; animal fats are Bad Fats. They're the ones that create all that nasty cholesterol that clogs up your arteries and then kill you. It's easy to fret and worry about about fats - saturated, unsaturated, mono and poly - you can even buy things off the shelves that say useful things like 'Low Fat', but there's an inescapable fact that makes people like me find it hard to excise fat from the diet - it tastes good.

But take heart: just like every other truth about diet this one has its exception. Down the bottom left-hand corner of France is an area called Gascony. Unless you fly to Lourdes for the occasional pilgrimage, that bit of France isn't much on the tourist map. What they do there, amongst other things, is eat a lot of goose and a lot of duck. Both of these birds come with a little bit of tasty flesh and lots of tasty fat, which the clever Gascons make much use of. Delicious rillettes, terrines and pates that contain enough fat to block an artery at twenty paces are part of a Gascon's staple diet. That and marc by the gallon. Marc, by the way, is the spirit that you make from the pressed grape skins and stalks after the wine-making process is over, rather like grappa.

So there you have the background; Gascons drink a lot of very strong liquor and eat loads of animal fat. Right then, these people die early of heart attacks, don't they? Well, actually they don't. On average they live ten years longer than everyone else in France. This astonishing statistic has been dubbed 'Le Paradox Francais', presumably by dieticians who can't readily come to terms with its implications. It's not really a paradox, of course, it's an anomaly that has as yet has defied explanation using conventional wisdom. If all of this intrigues you, then you might to pleased to know that Dublin now has its own French Paradox, which is in Shelbourne Road. The French Paradox is a wine bar: downstairs there's a shop where you can buy wines and assorted goodies, upstairs there's a long counter where you can sit and snack, as well as a few tables. It's all very crisp and modern, lots of polished wood, lots of light, lots of wine bottles and lots and lots of people. It's a very busy place indeed.

I'd phoned Miriam Thornton for a chat and she came up with the following idea: join me and my friend Michelle in the French Paradox, and you can meet our friends from Chile and France. Isn't that just so Dublin today? Where once this country took pride in being the most racially pure nation in Europe, now we've become a hub of internationalism, a misceganation of races, a multi-cultural ethnic mix that bubbles and buzzes in a polyglot Babel. Personally, I like that just fine. I spent many years of my life learning other languages and until recently I could only use them when I was on the continent. Now they come in handy in Dublin and the chance to practice them again is beginning to rescue them from the oblivion of my memory. So we became a table of six sitting downstairs, with French, Spanish and English being spoken around the table - wonderfully cosmopolitan, I thought.

Now I ought to be clear about this; the French paradox isn't a restaurant, you can't get a three course meal here. What's on offer in the way of food are 'assiettes' - what the French call a plateful of tasty snacky things. There's quite a few on the menu; assiettes of cold meats like cured ham and slices of various kinds of salamis, assiettes of pates and terrines and assiettes of cheeses. If you need something hot, then you can have a camembert fondue, all soft and runny and a joy to dip your bread into.

Talking of bread, you get good bread here. Baguettes that taste like the ones you eat in France rather than just looking like them, and bannettes, which come from Brittany and have a more open texture and are made from a slightly darker flour. You get plenty of bread and dips, there's good olive oil to smother your bread with and then there's the food on the plate that is best eaten with bread. If you have a problem with gluten, this may not be the meal for you.

Between us we managed a good selection from the menu, and the various cured meats, terrines and cheeses got passed around the table in the most communal of ways. You might think that this sort of food would not be for those with large appetites, but the funny thing was that even though we were all hungry, there was plenty of food left when the plates got cleared away.

Apart from the satisfying food, there's a well-chosen wine list of some unusual French regional wines. The owner, I think, is a lady who knows her wines well and can tell you not just what it's like and where it's from, but she can also tell you about who made the wine and can give you information about the vineyards as well. With this sort of help it's easy to find a wine for your mood.

This is a place that fills something of a niche market. It's friendly and easy and is just the sort of place that you can pop into for a light snack and a glass of wine before you go home from work. You'll pay roughly between €10 and €15 for your food and good wine can be found for under €25 a bottle.