For the last four Sundays I've been sitting with Tom Doorley being a restaurant critic on the new R.T.E. series 'The Restaurant', which will have been screened by the time you read this. It's been a load of fun to do, but it's also been a learning experience. What I've learned is this: there is a surprising unanimity about good food and bad food. We differ the most when it comes to placing those things that are neither remarkably good nor deeply unpleasant - the things that inhabit the middle ground. To put numbers on it, if we are marking out of ten, then we all tend to agree about the 8s, 9s and 10s and also about the 1s, 2s and 3s. We argue most about whether something might be worth a 4 or a 6. When I say 'we' here, I mean we the critics on the show and the resident kitchen team. It surprises me how often we agree. What that suggests to me is that restaurant criticism isn't an entirely personal view - there are plenty of points of agreement when several people venture an opinion on the same dish. It's possible that there might just be a touch of objective reality out there.

All this is not to say there aren't times when I find myself at odds with the majority. This week is a case in point. For the past few years I've tried occasionally to gain entry to the Elephant and Castle in Temple Bar. Maybe three times altogether, but it was always so busy and there was always such a long queue to get seated that I invariably gave up and went somewhere else. It's obvious then, that whatever they're doing in this restaurant pleases a great number of people. Sarah Owens and I got there quite late one evening, around ten o'clock, and for once there wasn't a queue. We were shown to our table immediately and Sarah let me sit looking out at the restaurant, a seating position I rarely get. It's a pleasing room, neither fussily decorated nor plain. The tables and chairs are simple and brasserie-like, the service is both attentive and quick. As soon as we'd sat down we were brought glasses of iced water and these were topped up frequently throughout the evening. After a few weeks on the trot of paying absurd money for mineral water, I found this to be immediately endearing.

This was dissipated somewhat as I scanned the wine list. Let me put it this way; most restaurant lists - especially restaurants in the bistro/brasserie end of the market - have wine lists where the price clusters around the €20 mark. A few wines below, a few above, but a quick look and you sense that the median price is €20 a bottle. Here, in the Elephant and Castle, the prices cluster around the €30. That makes me look harder at the list - either they've only stocked really expensive wines, or the mark-up is much higher than usual. In this case it's the latter. You won't have to cough up for a bottle of over-priced mineral water, instead you pay for over-priced wine. In the end I settled on the Foxwood Syrah, a French varietal that was pleasing enough, but with a price tag of €23.75.

So on to the menu. This is a place that's designed as far as I can see, for the one-plate diner. You come in, you get a plate of something, you leave. As a result the menu isn't set out in the classical starter, main course, dessert format, but rather in the type of dish format. So there's a section for salads, a section for sandwiches and one for burgers. There's a long listing of various drinks, ranging from health-type smoothies to different teas. Still, we were there to eat and we were both hungry, so we finally settled on a Caesar salad to share as a starter, a loin of pork for Sarah, which was a day's special, and a burger for me with the added bonus of cheddar atop.

The first thing I noticed is that the portions are American; they're big. Big plates, big portions. The Caesar salad, described as a 'Baby Caesar' on my bill, was bigger than most I've seen as a starter and at €8.95 more expensive than most. It is, by many accounts, a signature dish and has been praised in print more than once. I found it too mustardy and vinagary and I would have preferred to find the dressing dispersed throughout the leaves - and indeed I'd have liked to see the leaves cut up a little.

Next came the mains, Sarah's pork loin was in spiced medallions and was served with a radicchio salad. Sarah enjoyed it and so did I, when I tasted a bit. My burger was good too, but not exceptional, and it came with plenty of chips. By this time we'd fallen into conversation with Eva and Allan from Stockholm, who were sitting alongside us, so whatever quibbles I may have had with my food were sublimated by conversation. We finished our meal with an agreeable dessert, a yoghurt Frou-Frou, which was priced at €8.50, not cheap for a pudding.

We were still chatting to our Swedish friends when the restaurant emptied and it was time to go. I found myself puzzled by our meal, which for a bottle of wine, one starter, two main courses and one dessert cost €81. Was this the food that so many have praised? Surely not. The attraction can't be cheapness either, even an espresso is €2.25, so it must be something else. Perhaps it's the ambience: it's a friendly place and the waiting staff are excellent. There's a friendly buzz and it has just the sort of easy feel that makes talking to your neighbours easy.