Whatever it is that makes a restaurant a success or a failure isn't always something that you can predict. Okay, poor food, bad service and high prices are more or less guaranteed to fail, but even with these givens I can think of one or two places that still continue to trade quite successfully. You can make comparisons with the movie business; you get a great script, attach some big box-office names to it, get a good director, a decent budget and you make the movie. Then it bombs and you wonder why. All the ingredients were there for success but for one - that elusive spark that captures the public's imagination. If it was an exact science there'd never be a movie that bombed, there'd never be a record released that wasn't a hit and no restaurant would ever open that wasn't guaranteed instant success. The trouble is of course that finding a route to success isn't a science at all, still less a perfect one. It's an art - even the people who get it right more often than not can still go wrong.

When I think of the restaurants that have pleased me they all have things in common. Good food is an obvious characteristic, value for money is another, but there are some assets that are less obvious. A warm welcome, for example. Having your pre-booked table ready when you arrive. These may not be major events in themselves, but I really do notice their absence. There's an indefinable quality, too, that I look for, a sense that the people in the restaurant know what they're doing. Whenever you get the sense that your in the hands of professionals, you begin to relax. You don't need to be on your toes pre-empting mistakes - you can relax in the knowledge that there aren't going to be any.

The space in which you are sitting also has its impact. Places that are over-designed can make you uncomfortable simply because the designer has put fashion statements ahead of comfort. Really trendy looking chairs that are hard to sit on, clever tables that are too small to hold the table settings easily, tableware that was chosen for its style, not its functionality. Sometimes in very trendy restaurants there's a palpable sense exuding from the waiting staff that they're actually far too cool to bother with the likes of you. Whenever I get a sniff of this - that the waiting staff feel their own sense of importance acutely - I get the urge to run. Arrogance comes in many forms, but the most common, judging by my post-bag, is the inability to deal effectively with complaints. Often the attitude appears to be 'the customer is wrong, no matter what.' Ghastly stories come to me by email of rudeness, combative arguing and simple inability to negotiate. Maybe if a tiny down-turn comes in our economy that kind of nonsense may become less common.

So, unusually for me it was a Saturday night outing for a review. Normally I hate going to restaurants on a Saturday night because the service tends to be creakier than mid-week when fewer people fill the dining-rooms. My son Rocco and I set off across the Wicklow Gap heading for the plains of Kildare and down-town Naas in particular. We were headed for The Storeroom, the old railway storehouse in the centre of Naas. Built in 1885 when Naas had a railway line, it's a fine stone building with handsome wooden floors and a high ceiling, which has now been converted into a restaurant. It works rather well as a conversion - the tables are well-placed to ensure space for everyone, the high-backed upholstered chairs act like a privacy wall and the high ceiling ensures that no one gets choked on cigarette smoke, although by January that'll be irrelevant.

We got an instant welcome at the door and were shown to our table. In moments we had our bills of fare, a bottle of mineral water and bread rolls on the table. The menu and wine list have a picture of a steam locomotive on the cover, which seems appropriate, while the long tubular lampshades high above mirrored the locomotive's funnel. I started with the wine list which is average in length and above average in mark-up. It's arranged from light-bodied to full-bodied, an arrangement that's about as useful as listing the wines by their Pantone colour shade. As it happened Rocco wanted beer so I chose the only half bottle of red I could find, a Fleurie at €16. From a range of beers Rocco settled on a bottle of Tiger Beer.

The menu is fairly classical European, but it does have a dash of Asian. Most of the starters are in the €8 - €10 range, although the prawns are a bit more expensive. There were mussels, pate, their signature Caesar salad, wontons, French onion soup among the starters, so Rocco had the Caesar salad and I had the onion soup. Both of these were good, so we were looking forward to the main courses. Looking through the main courses before we ordered, Rocco had said 'look, just what I like, meat done in lots of different ways.' He was right, there was beef in a variety of ways, lamb, pork and duck. I convinced him to be a retro-diner and have the steak Diane, which he did, while I had the pork chop. Again, both of us had competently made dishes, plenty of it, and really attentive service.

Neither of us had desserts, just two very good espressos for me - they understand the concept of 'short' espressos here - and an Irish coffee for Rocco. The bill of €97.15 excluding service puts the Storehouse in the upper-middle price bracket, but for an evening out, this restaurant gets all the important things right.