We men are creatures of habit and so, of course, are big men too. We like things to be just where they always have been, especially furniture. We don't like coming home and finding our favourite chair on the other side of the room. It's like feng shui to us, a room feels right when we know where everything is. When people make changes like moving our chair it's disorientating. The comfort of daily habit is the weft to the warp of our male universe. And it's not just at home that we like to know where everything is, out in the wide world we like to have our world map confirmed by experience. This is where I like to walk, this is where I park my car, this is where I buy my shirts, this is where I have my lunch, this is where I buy my daily newspaper and this is where I, er, umm, darling, where are my socks? You see, we know our way around this map, and that's why asking for directions is so hard - it means we've gone outside our internal map, and we don't like that.

These thoughts passed through my mind last week as I walked along St. Stephen's Green. It's a part of Dublin that I feel comfortable in, that block that lies between Grafton Street, Nassau Street, Kildare Street and the Green. I know where things are in this bit of the city, and for a country boy like me that's very comforting. And because I feel a oneness with this territory, when something new happens here I'm inclined to notice it. Take Peploe's. I'd been curious to know what was happening in that building while all the renovations were in progress, and now I know. It's gone from being the vaults of a bank to being a restaurant with a differing twist, but not before many, many tons of reinforced concrete had been removed from the vaults' interior. What's left is a sort of bright, semi-basement just a few steps down from pavement level.

As you walk in the first thing you find is a long bar counter. I still haven't seen it in its entirety, each time I've been inside Peploe's the bar has been so crowded I couldn't actually see the counter. Peploe's describes itself as a wine bistro, but that perhaps doesn't really tell you enough about what it's trying to do. For a start there are no set times for eating. You can walk in at any time of day and have either a small snack, a more substantial meal, or simply a glass of wine. The menu is designed so that you can do just that, there's no implicit pressure on you to eat a three-course meal. In this respect Peploe's is unusual; offhand I can't think of any other place in Dublin that sets out to do this.

The room is essentially in two parts: a thick, vaulted wall runs the length of the building down the middle and there are dining areas on either side of it, as well as a smaller area just inside the door. I was there again this week for an annual event where all the wine journalists gather for a lunch hosted by Grants of Ireland. There were about twenty of us and we were given a table at the back of room, overlooked by a large mural which runs most of the length of the wall. We were dining from a set menu with plenty of choices that gave a fair representation of the dishes that are on offer. Starters were pan-fried breast of squab pigeon with a blueberry and cauliflower puree and orange cured sea trout with a crushed haricot bean and rocket salad. I chose the trout, which came looking very much like gravadlax, no surprise since it was prepared in much the same way, but with the addition of orange juice. It may sound a little outré, but it worked really well. The slightly sweet and sour effect of the tart orange on the trout made this into an interesting variation on simple gravadlax. Across the table from me was a nicely cooked squab and I managed to inveigle a mouthful.

So far so good, and there's no test of a restaurant's capacities as stringent as a large table of food and wine journalists. There were three main courses on offer: a braised rump of lamb, a grilled entrecote of beef and a roast fillet of cod. I had the rump of lamb, which had been cooked slowly. It was perfectly tender and came on a bed of leaf spinach which I really enjoyed. Across the table from me the entrecotes were devoured happily, leaving most of us in no position to enjoy the desserts, a chocolate fool and an apple strudel.

The daily lunch menu carries a greater variety of choices: there are breads and savouries, soups, fish and shell fish, pasta, grills, roasts and pies. They're not laid out as starters, main courses and desserts - just by those categories, which reinforces the idea that you can come here for just a bowl of soup or for half a lobster. More interestingly, the prices have been pitched quite low for somewhere so central. You could have a croque monsieur for €7.50, a French onion soup for €5.75, a plate of pasta for €9.50 or Peploe's own cottage pie for €11.50. What you get in return for these modest prices is good food in a very smart, chic environment, something that's not terribly common in today's high-priced Dublin. I have a feeling I'll be popping into Peploe's for a snack whenever I get the chance.