A friend of mine turned to me last week and said, 'I know a restaurant you should go to.' 'Oh, yeah?' I said. 'You should go to it', he went on, 'because it's reeeeally bad. Bad food, bad service. And it's expensive.' 'So why should I go there?' I asked. 'To give it a bad review, of course', came the reply. Now I don't know whether this sounds unreasonable to you, but I don't want to go somewhere that'll give me a bad meal. It's not as though you don't come across them anyway, but to actually go looking for a bad meal seems entirely deranged to me. Okay, I can see the argument that maybe it might dissuade someone from wasting their money, but on balance I think I'd much rather boldly go and seek out good food and tell you when I've found it. Don't forget it's a night out for me too, and frankly I'd rather eat well than badly. I mean, the logic of the other position would lead you making an annual list of the one hundred worst restaurants in Ireland. 'The Top 100 Restaurants to Avoid', an annual anthology of vile food, execrable service and extortionate prices - no, I dunno, I don't think I'd go out and buy it.
So if I'm not going to go down that route then I'm left with the hunt for a good meal, which is an endless quest with only occasional satisfaction. Still, if the start of 2004 is anything to go by, I might be in for the gastronomic year to beat all years. I've had a string of good meals in the last couple of months and my run of good fortune shows no sign of abating. This week I got another very fine meal cooked by a young and talented chef, and I find myself coming to the conclusion that there's been a major paradigm shift in the catering industry. Where once any young chef who wanted a real career had to emigrate to learn the trade, now there's a sufficiently large pool of talented chefs in this country to teach by example that emigration is no longer a necessity.

A case in point is Warren Gillen who has La Riva in Wexford town. A young man with a mission to create good food, he's been chef/patron of his eponymous restaurant for the last few years. I've been hearing about him and his kitchen for a year or two and he's been on my 'to do' list for a while. So when I arranged to meet to my Sharon Andrews in Wicklow town, I thought that a bit more driving to get us to Wexford might well be worth it. We did the classic new-in-town thing: parked and asked a passer-by where La Riva was. 'There.' came the answer. We were standing beside it.

The restaurant is upstairs and you find yourself in a dining room that overlooks the Crescent Quay, the estuary glittering prettily with lights under a star-lit sky. The menu is seasonal; we were handed a 'winter evening menu' where starters range from €5 to €10 and main courses from €17 to €22. What's clear enough from the fare on offer is that much of it locally sourced, a growing trend in serious restaurants and one that is to be encouraged. From an eclectic range of starters Sharon picked a day's special, which was deep-fried salmon, cod and monkfish fritters and she followed this with roast peppered monkfish. I was very tempted by the soup - potato and shitake mushroom with truffle oil - but in the end chose the slow-cooked belly of pork with parsnip mashed potato, and followed that with an organic mushroom risotto.

The wine list isn't very long and it's quite idiosyncratic, but as I discovered later it's well matched to Mr. Gillen's flavourful cooking. There was a page of specials, which included some good value wines; a Madfish Bay Sauvignon for €24 and good Sancerre for €30. Sharon prefers red to white, so we chose a Cune Rioja, good value at €24. A jug of iced water was on the table and was replenished more than once for us during the meal.

We got a surprise before the starters. A demitasse of the soup came as amuse bouche, so I got taste the soup anyway. It was spectacularly good and it turns out is one of La Riva's signature dishes. The actual starters were also very good; a really delicate beer batter covered perfectly cooked mouthfuls of fish on Sharon's plate, while two dainty pieces of pork belly came to me on a really delicious parsnip mash. The kitchen's skill and competence came through again with our main courses, a real taste blast on Sharon's plate where the mustard mash with hints of spice made an instant impact on both of us. My choice of mushroom risotto was intended as a test for the kitchen and it passed with flying colours. A perfect risotto with the fine flavour of shitake and oyster mushrooms made me very happy.

At this point we driven onwards by greed rather than by hunger, and chose the warm chocolate pot with a coffee granita to share between us. Not just this, but home-made chocolate truffles came as well to further tempt our palates. We finished this excellent meal with a couple of espressos and congratulated ourselves for having picked this restaurant for our meal. Once again, as with the other exceptional meals of the past few weeks, this one came with a surprisingly small price, €88.20. I do realise that overheads in Wexford town are not as high as in Dublin city centre, but this kind of quality cooking would still have been good value had it cost 50% more.