It's always a surprise to me when we get to the end of another year. Another twelve months passed that seem like a blink of an eye. Five years ago when I started doing these reviews I wondered how long it could last, how long it would be before I'd covered every restaurant in the country. A year? Two years? And here we are after five years and the restaurants keep opening faster than I get to review them. Back in October 1997 when I began reviewing, the Merrion Hotel opened for business in the same month, so we're almost karmically twinned. Five years later and the Merrion's an established part of Dublin's fabric as well as being my favourite city centre hotel, while I'm still chasing that same sort of well-established recognition.

As a year it's not been very different from others. There have been a few excellent meals, a few below par meals and lots of in-between ones. This is the year when we all expected to find big rises in prices as a result of the conversion to the euro, yet my restaurant expenditure over the year has been much the same as last year. What I have noticed, however, is that an increasing number of restaurants are charging for a completely bald and naked main course - anything else on the plate is charged extra, under the name of 'side order'. This includes the most basic of garnishes like a boiled potato, which in many places is now considered an extra to your main course. It's a trend that I really dislike; a main course in my opinion should come to you complete, it should be an entity created by the chef, a balance and harmony of textures and tastes.

So to single out the meals of distinction. Early in the year I had a simple snack lunch in the Grangecon Cafe, deep in the heart of south Wicklow. It's one of those enterprises driven more by passion than hard-nosed commerce and therefore it won my heart at once. Also, any place that brings the art of good coffee to where it was previously unavailable gets my support. It was also the year that some of my own prejudices got severely shaken. I've long believed that combining a good restaurant with a hotel is an uphill battle that rarely succeeds. Sure, you can point me to the excellent Patrick Guilbaud's for proof that I'm wrong, but I can point you to many more that make my point very well. Still, a meal in O'Connell's in Bewley's Hotel Ballsbridge made me consider the possibility that good food can be found even outside stand-alone restaurants.

In much the same way I have always been prejudiced about restaurants in or over pubs. I've always had the nagging belief that the food is there simply to make sure that I go on drinking and don't leave the premises rather than being there in its own right. This bigotry of mine was severely tested when I ate a fabulous meal in The Vico, a restaurant that lives above The Queens pub in Dalkey, a meal which was probably the most inventive and imaginative of the year. But apart from shaking my previous belief set, it also pointed out another truth - my experience is not universal. You, dear reader, should never lose sight of the fact that I go to a restaurant only once. I could get the best meal they've ever made, or I could get the worst. A single meal can never be a representative sample, which is why I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to mediocre meals.

It's a built-in problem with the snap-shot style of restaurant reviewing. Any restaurant that's open six days a week for lunch and dinner will have a minimum of two chefs and probably more. It's very likely that one will be better than the others, and it's by no means certain that the one who cooked for me will be the one who cooks for you. The only way to get past this particular problem is to eat only in restaurants that have a chef/patron who is permanently on duty or learn the name of a chef whose food you enjoy and follow that chef as he moves from restaurant to restaurant.

And that's another thing that you need to watch out for. Chefs are frequently on the move. I go somewhere, get a good meal, write about it and three weeks later it's printed in the magazine. A month after that you go to try the place out and the chef's already left for somewhere else. This is no imaginary scenario, I can think of two occasions when it's happened.

Given all these caveats you may well wonder what use a review from me can be. In defence of the format I'll say this; there are certain things that are definitely in the restaurateur's control, although there are many that are not. If those things - like having enough well-trained staff to ensure good service, or a properly constructed menu, or matching the price to the quality - if those things aren't handled correctly then you can reasonably assume that nothing else will be either. In other words if the controllable can't be looked after, what hope is there for the variables.

What I can say with certainty is that standards are still rising. Cooking is becoming increasingly skilful and so is the general standard of service. Gone are the days when you'd be ashamed to bring a foreign visitor out for a meal, although you'd still have a problem finding a restaurant to take an Italian visitor to. Maybe I'll make that my wish for the New Year - let me find good Italian food here in 2003.