It's an old and thorny question going right back to the Black and White Minstrel Show and earlier. If a Caucasian slaps on some dark panstick, can he sing like a black man? Did it work for Al Jolson when he sang 'Mammy'? More to the point, did it work for you? What about Laurence Olivier when he blacked up for Othello? Or put it another way, do you need to be black to play Othello? It's a puzzle all right: this week I ask, can blue men sing the whites?

You can make the same arguments both for and against when it comes to cooking as well. Personally I like to find that the man who's making me sashimi is Japanese. I quite like my Thai food prepared by Thai chefs. I have a built-in preference for Italian food cooked by Italians. I do wonder whether this is racist of me; I accept that there's no logical reason why a Welshman shouldn't make wonderful Dim Sung, or a Norwegian make great dolmades. Why should you bat an eyelid if your smorgasbord is made by an Algerian? A rose is a rose is a rose, or as we used to say in Latin 'rosa rosa rosa est est'. Yet I'd maintain that there's a familiarity with flavours and with tradition that comes when it's part of a chef's upbringing, rather than learned later in life, and that familiarity resonates with the aficionados of that same cuisine.

I suppose it's all down to the palate's discrimination. Even in Italy I find a prejudice for pizzas made by Neapolitans, for Mozzarella made in Aversa, for cured ham that comes from Parma - all things that can be, and are, produced by many people of different race and tradition - yet none the less, prejudices for particular production values remain. When it comes to 'Italian Restaurants' it would be nice if there was some common understanding of what that meant. If it means - as the Dublin experience would lead you to believe - that it's a place that serves 'bruschetta' (always wrongly pronounced and often wrongly spelled) and thick pizzas and overcooked pasta swimming in sauce like a soup, then so be it. But frankly I'd prefer if there was some sort of trades description act in effect, and that the words 'Italian Restaurant' actually did have a meaning. For the moment, until we can have a kind of badge of approval, you can think of that description as a sort of theme. Mostly it means you can hear some Italian music and eat dishes that sound Italian, even if they don't taste Italian.

Occasionally I find that my palate surprises me with its accuracy. In the past month it's happened twice: I tasted a dish and thought 'an Italian cooked this' and turned out to be right. Once in Mario's in Sandymount when a really good <it>gnocchi alla gorgonzola turned out to be made by a young Italian chef called Chico, and then again this week when I went into Prima Donna with my daughter, Isabella. I'd managed to catch her during a lull in her hectic social life and we decided that an Italian meal might be nice. I've been wanting to eat in Dunne and Crescenzi's for ages and we tried, but it's not really a place for a three course meal dinner, so we walked over the road to Prima Donnas, which announces itself as 'Sicilian'.

I've been reviewing restaurants long enough now that although I've yet to review a restaurant twice, I find increasingly I'm in a new restaurant that used to be one before under another name. Prima Donna is like this; it's in the premises where George's Bistro used to be. It's all prettily painted up afresh now and looked bright and new, but one thing has remained from the old restaurant, and that's the live music. Just inside the door sits a shiny new piano that serves as the keyboard and synthesiser for the music of Ronan McGee, which is mostly main stream jazz. Before the live music though, you get the Italian CD's - Adriano Celentano sang through our starters.

Isabella picked New Zealand mussels as a starter, which came in a tasty tomato sauce that had my daughter, usually unwilling to eat sea food, oohing with contentment. I'd chosen the squid rings, which came in an extremely light and crisp batter, almost like a delicate tempura, and inside the crunchy casing was squid cooked to tender perfection. A green salad dressed exactly as I like it was underneath, and I found myself saying to Isabella 'I'll bet the chef's Italian.' No surprises then, to learn that he comes from Sicily and our waitress from Roma.

The wine list is not at all Chauvinist, carrying many wines from France and the New World as well as Italy, a breadth of choice you'd never find in Italy itself. I couldn't find a Sicilian red that I liked, like Cannonau, but there was a Primitivo de Manduria listed at €22, which we ordered and enjoyed.

The main courses were a pizza 'Lucky Luciano' for Isabella that came with aubergines, potatoes and plenty of mozzarella and left her happy again and a Sicilian sausage for me. The sausage made for a truly rustic dish of strong flavours, as robust as anything my granny used to make. It did have an interesting twist that made it different from our local Lazio sausage; it had a taste of anise, which after a while I began to enjoy.

By the time we'd finished our main courses neither of us were inclined to a dessert, but we both ordered and enjoyed a well-made espresso. By this time the live music had begun, so we sipped the remains of our wine and enjoyed the immediacy of the music. A bill for €83.50 didn't seem like a lot when there's live music as well as genuine food. I'd be happy to give Prima Donna a seal of approval for a real Italian restaurant.