You can think of restaurants as organic beings: they have a life span, they come into being, they flourish, they achieve maturity and then slowly pass away. At least, that's the norm. Ten years would be a good run. But there are restaurants out there that are like hardy perennials, they flourish and continue to flourish year after year. Still, a twenty year life-span is unusual and any restaurant that can keep going through endless changes in fashion and style must be doing something right. That's when a restaurant becomes an institution, a fixture, a landmark. After twenty years another generation of diners have become customers and the restaurant lives on. The Red Bank in Skerries is one of these long-lived restaurants, its chef-proprietor Terry McCoy has nurtured his restaurant through hard times and good times and under his careful eye it still pulls in the customers.

I'd set out from Dublin with Amber Ryan, an Australian foodie whose family are much involved in the business. We struggled manfully through the endless roadworks on the N1, wondering as we did how much longer people are prepared to accept a single lane on one of the nation's busiest roads. In any other country it would be a major scandal, and this was the very day the government had announced that the road plan was several years behind schedule. Expect completion sometime in the next ten years. Maybe.

Despite this, we got to Skerries on the dot of 8.30 as booked and took a seat in the little lounge to have an aperitif and look at the menus. A nice touch, they bring a little plate of canapés to pick on while you read - some crudités and dips, some crispy potato skins and some periwinkles. Neither Amber nor I had eaten periwinkles before, so we dug into the little shells with the provided toothpicks and pulled out what can only be described as a snot. I know now that snails are snails, whether from the garden or from the sea.

The Red Bank is essentially a fish restaurant, which given its geographical position on the coast is unsurprising. You have several choices: a seasonal menu which is priced at €39, a table d'hote which is priced at €42, or there's an a la carte. There are of course plenty of dishes for committed carnivores, but both Amber and I felt that the smart thing to do here was choose fish. Just to spread ourselves around the menu a bit I chose from the seasonal menu and Amber chose from the a la carte.

Now I'll admit to a strong prejudice in my eating habits; I like rare meat and I like lightly cooked fish. Not only that, I really don't like meat or fish that's well cooked. It's just a personal thing, a preference of mine. Although we'd decided on fish, I'd seen lambs' kidneys as a starter, done in mustard sauce, a it's a dish I've always really liked. Naturally I chose them, and I asked for them to be cooked 'pink', to satisfy my liking for underdone meats. Amber chose the cheese parcel, which was made with goats' cheese. To follow, she picked the hake and I had the rock pollack.

The wine list is fairly long and there are lots of reasonably priced wines on it, here the mark-up is what used to be considered normal, but these days is starting to look cheap as more and more restaurants really load up the wine prices. I chose a good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the Montana, which was listed at €24 and ordered a bottle of mineral water to go with it.

Two rather clumsy starters arrived at our table, I can only guess that they were the work of a harrassed and overworked commis rather than the head chef himself. I had to leave my kidneys on the plate, they'd been cooked until crispy - something that may well please a lot of people, but doesn't work for me. Amber's cheese parcel tasted fine, it just looked a little ungainly. After the plates were cleared away we were brought two lemon sorbets which had come directly from the deep freeze, making them as hard as cannon balls. Again, my preference would be for sorbets that were soft.

Still, we'd come for the fish and that was still to come. Two prettily presented plates arrived with generous portions of fish on each. We swapped morsels and explored what we had. Both dishes were more cooked than I would have liked, but as I say, I realise that I could well be in the minority here. They were both very fresh and very fine pieces of fish, and I have to add that getting pollack was a bonus for me. It's a fish that you'll rarely see, fishmongers dislike its propensity to spoil quickly, but when you get a fresh piece as I had on my plate, it's a very good fish indeed.

But as with many things in life, the best was still to come. The dessert trolley, a multi-tiered creation, was wheeled over to our table and a spectacular array of cakes and gateaux were before our eyes. Chocolate and cream were much in evidence, as were fruits. There were seven or eight to choose from, which left Amber in something of a quandary, until the waitress suggested a taste of two different ones, giving her a slice of the chocolate tourte and a slice of the cheesecake. With supreme self-restraint I settled on some cheese instead.

We finished up with a couple of espressos and a little cognac for Amber, and sat for a while finishing off our wine. We looked around at a busy restaurant filled with happy diners. Whatever misgivings I'd had, I was clearly in a minority of one. €116.25 settled the evening's bill.