The search for Rosemount's Young Restaurant Manager of the Year continues apace, this week finding me and fellow judges in Osborne's in Portmarnock where Sebastien Patry nurtures his customers with Gallic charm and much savoir faire. I took the scenic drive over the hills to get there to meet Sandra Doody and Ernie Whalley, who were my fellow judges for the night. It's been a while since I've been out to Portmarnock and I'd forgotten how pretty it can look on a sunny evening.

Osborne's Restaurant is part of the Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links complex, which is a smart new building looking inside like many a new luxury hotel. The lobby is bright, welcoming and rather chic and just through it, on the left, I found Ernie and Sandra having a pre-prandial drink in the bar. We sat in comfort there looking through a long and interesting menu while making up our minds as to what to eat. Last year Osborne's won an award for their fish dishes, so I found myself concentrating on them.

Two thoughts on this initial reading of the bills of fare - the menu is confident, imaginative and quite pricey. Starters run up to the late teens, main courses up to the late twenties. The wine list is long, contains a lot of branded favourites, and has a high mark-up. You'd be looking long and hard to find a wine priced at around €20. Curiously this high mark-up doesn't seem to run across the board - the Australian shiraz 'Balmoral', a wine which retails at close to €50, was on the list at just over €70, which is more than fair, even though it would suit few people's budget.

Sebastien called us to our table and a short walk across the lobby and downstairs took us to Osborne's, which has a fabulous view across Dublin Bay. We were sat by the picture window and right in front of me, in the distance, I could see the Sugar Loaf and the Little Sugar Loaf. It was a long view - over the golf course, over the salt marshes, over the Bay, all the way to Bray Head. While I was taking this in, I became a plane spotter. Every minute, from left to right, all the way across the picture window, the planes came - every one of them on exactly the same glide path on their way to Dublin airport. I just might have become a little boring. 'Ooh look, a Jumbo. Look, a 707. Is that a BAC 111? What's that yellow plane?' Give them their due, Sandra and Ernie were indulgent with me as I turned slowly into an anorak before their eyes. 'Good thing you don't have a short-wave radio to listen to the pilots talking to ATC, or you'd never concentrate on the meal,' said Ernie. True enough. it was time to focus.

The meal began with an <it> amuse bouche, a prawn with salsa to get the gastric juices flowing. We'd ordered a Rosemount white, the Chardonnay and Semillon mix for the beginning of the meal, but had left the choice of red to Sebastien. Not an easy choice, either, because Sandra and I had picked a fish main course, while Ernie had chosen poached beef. He chose a good wine from the Gaillac, which both Ernie and I thought may have been a Grenache varietal, but turned out instead to be a Merlot and Cabernet Franc mix, so possibly it was the Cabernet Franc that was giving us the green vinous taste.

Our starters were thus: a loin of rabbit for Ernie, scallops for Sandra and six plain Atlantic oysters for me. All nicely served, we each took a taste of the others' dish and decided that service and presentation were strong suits for Osborne's.

Like true gourmets we'd ordered a sorbet next and a very good champagne sorbet came to cleanse our palates. The level of presentation carried right on through to our main courses, which arrived with their tops on and these were removed in unison to display our main courses. Two fine pieces of poached fillet for Ernie, a sea-bass for Sandra and a sole on the bone for me. Nothing wildly complex here, but all three dishes were competently done and impeccably served.

With three courses down, dessert was hardly a priority, but we did pick the dessert assiette - a taste of most of the desserts on offer - which we shared between us. Which took us to the coffee stage. I've seen espressos priced high before, but €3 for a single and €6 for a double seemed a bit OTT to me, as indeed was €7.50 for the sorbet. The trouble is that these small elements that seem so inconsequential in themselves do in fact add up when it comes to the bill, which in this case was just under €250 for the three of us.

As fine dining goes that's not the most that you can pay in this over-priced city of ours, but it's well up there with the better known restaurants in price. The food was good, the service was polished, but I found myself retreating into my old prejudice against hotel dining rooms. For all its high aspirations it seemed a little soulless to me. On the other hand, if I was a rich visiting golfer, it must be more than a little handy to be able to eat well, if expensively, without having to go into the city centre. That said, if value for money isn't high on your agenda, you could go to Osborne's secure in the knowledge that you'd be well-treated, plus you'd get a great a chance to become a plane spotter for the night.