Opening night at The Gate is always an interesting event and this one was no exception. Mark O'Rowe's 'Crestfall', a series of three monologues delivered by three female protagonists left the normally voluble first-nighters at a loss for words. Powerful stuff that clearly affected even the most blasé by its intensity. Despite this, my son and I were hungry afterwards. Obviously a few drinks in the bar to say 'You were wonderful, darling, mwahh, mwahh,' was called for, but after that the gastric juices were winning.

My son, Rocco, was with me and was perhaps keener than me to leave the luvvies and look for food. We'd almost settled on a pizzeria that he's fond of when another decision came out of the ether and before we knew it we were in the company of the Three Graces: Isabel Smith, Sarah Owens and Irene Keogh, heading for Westmoreland Street. Sarah lives near there and was determined that we should try Balducci's. 'It's been a godsend to me while I was studying for my exams,' she said, which sounded like recommendation enough to the rest of us.

One of the problems with city centre restaurants like Balducci's is that it can be hard to park, but a few circuits later we were all parked properly and legally in D'Olier Street, which was close enough. Annoyingly, though, as we reached the restaurant, there was a parking place right outside the door. 'I could have parked there,' I whinged quietly, until I was told to shut up by the others. The dining room is on the first floor above The Westmoreland bar and is on two levels, one for non-smokers and one for smokers. I found myself in the now unusual situation for me that I was the only non-smoker, so naturally we headed for the smoking section. We got a table next to the window from where we could survey the city life below, and to my chagrin, even more empty places for parking just below me.

Maybe I've lived for too long in the country, but I found the constant array of police cars, ambulances, crowds of people and endless passing traffic profoundly interesting. 'Easy to see you're a culchie,' ventured Isabel, 'staring out of the window like that.' Justly rebuked I kept my attention on the conversation at the table, but it did occur to me that perhaps I've got overly used to looking out of windows at grass and sheep. Now Balducci's fits exactly into the style of Italian restaurant that usually annoys me. It's got an Italian name, has an Italian menu, but the feel is more cosmopolitan. This is reinforced by the personable Australian lady who seemed to be in charge and by the quiet charm of our Polish waiter. I peered at the menu, certain it would be full of badly spelled Italian. It wasn't. Even names often mis-spelled in Italy are correct here. Definitely a good portent, I thought.

Sarah handed me the wine list and told me to pick one. I thought a full, jammy Shiraz might do the trick and picked a Rosemount Shiraz, which was listed at €20.75. Rocco picked himself a beer and Isabel had a vodka. The odd thing was that even when we were leaving there was still wine in the bottle - a remarkable event when divided between three wine drinkers.

With five of us eating we managed to try quite a selection of dishes from the menu. The starters are mostly between €6 and €8 and from these we had the calamari risotto with truffle for Rocco, the three-colour salad for Sarah, some pate for Irene and mussels with Serrano Ham for me.

These were good starters; generous in size, well-flavoured and properly cooked. I found myself looking forward to our next courses, which were a pizza Margherita for Sarah, a pizza Diavola for me, a risotto for Isabel and braised lamb with a rosemary sauce for Rocco. The pizzas were well made, but I'll never be convinced that sweet corn and pineapple belong on either a pizza or on an Italian menu. Well made pizzas, but the ingredients weren't really authentic. I know it's pedantic, but I really like Italian ingredients on my pizza. The other courses were more to my taste, the stufato of lamb was very tasty, and the risotto main course just as well made as Rocco's starter version.

The result of this tasting menu was that I was surprised at how good the food was. Throughout the evening the service had been impeccable - friendly and professional - a mix that's never easy to get right, and that always goes a long way to making a meal enjoyable. We decided that a couple of desserts between us might help us to finish the meal properly, so we ordered an ice-cream and a panna cotta and shared them around. A dark rum for Rocco and an espresso for me rounded off a remarkably alcohol-light night, which is exactly how it would have happened had we been in Italy. Strange; in Italy alcohol is cheap and easily available, bars stay open until very late, there's no age limit on entering a bar, and yet no one drinks to excess. I've yet to see an Italian drunk on the streets. If that says anything at all useful it's probably that prohibition has never been much of a solution to alcohol abuse. Heavy regulation doesn't seem to work too well either - check out Scandinavian drinking habits if you want to see where that leads.

Anyway, we had a good night in Balducci's and the bill didn't hurt too much either. For the five of us the bill came to €121.32 including service, which by Dublin standards is pretty reasonable.