If you were to look up any of my old reviews on my website you'll find that they have the review date alongside them. There's a reason for this: the longer ago they were written, the less likely they are to reflect the current situation. It's one of those inescapable facts - restaurants are constantly changing. Chefs come and go, management teams change, new policies are implemented on sourcing raw materials and the waiting staff tend to change very frequently. All this means restaurants are often in flux; sometimes they change the better and sometimes they change for the worse.

There's another effect to come to terms with as well, the time lag. Often a few months pass before a change gets noticed. You can find yourself going to a restaurant where you had a brilliant meal a few months back and then you find all has changed and you get a bad meal. The opposite happens too: you can find yourself dragged unwillingly to place where you remember a less than satisfactory meal the last time you went and then you get a pleasant surprise. It's another inescapable fact; information isn't always up to date.

I tell you this because over the past six months people have been telling me about the Woodlands Restaurants in the Glenview Hotel. I've been there a few times over the years and have never had a bad meal, but from the tone of what I've been hearing it was apparent that something had changed there and it was change for the better. Obviously I had to go and check this out. I have a good friend and neighbour, Nora Swords, who has in the past done a lot of catering and whose speciality has always been patisserie. A real foodie always makes for a good companion when it comes to reviewing, so I was happy that she was able to accompany me to the Woodlands.

The Glenview Hotel is set just where it name suggests, on a hill overlooking the Glen of the Downs. The Woodlands Restaurant is on the first floor and has a remarkable view over the Glen - you can see the N11 snaking through the trees on the floor of the valley. Hard to believe looking at this thick woodland that people got so exercised over it a few years ago, there seem to be more trees than ever. Inside it's exactly what you'd expect from a hotel dining room - it's a big room, the tables are very well spaced and are generous and linen-covered, the chairs are large and very comfortable carvers. There was a pianist tinkling at the other end of the room from where we were sat and you could just about hear the music across the hubbub of a very busy room.

I used to be prejudiced against hotel dining rooms, believing that they rarely produced food as good as restaurants, but that prejudice of mine was overturned many years ago by the Nuremore Hotel. The Woodlands reinforced that: it may be a hotel, but the food is very good. There are two menus to choose from; an a la carte and a set dinner at €45. At first sight that looks expensive, until you realise that it includes four courses and your coffee or tea at the end of the meal. If you were hungry enough to eat your way through it all, it's good value. There were three starters, a soup or a sorbet, six main courses and five desserts to choose from on the set menu, with a wider choice available on the a la carte.

The wine list, which I was told is about to be up-graded, is average in length but pleasingly all the wines listed are under €30 and have a reasonable mark-up. Finding a Sancerre for €27 on a restaurant list is a bit of a rarity, so we had that.

Our meal began with some really good breads - I particularly liked the tomato roll - and then an amuse bouche, which was a demitasse of the prawn bisque; quite delicious. Nora's starter was the warm leek tartlet, tastily done with tiny lardons of smoked bacon, but a little marred by an overcooked base. I'd picked the feta salad on the basis that it wasn't going to be filling and it simple and well made.

As an entremets Nora had chosen a citrus sorbet, nicely sharp in taste, but in texture maybe closer to an ice-cream than a water-ice, while I had the red pepper and tomato soup, which was truly delicious. Our main courses came, the pan-fried Guinea fowl with lemon and thyme polenta for Nora and a wild mushroom risotto for me. Both of these dishes were well-made and well-presented, but my risotto was superb. Perfectly cooked rice with a buttery rich texture and plenty of Shitake mushrooms to flavour it. I couldn't eat it all, but I thoroughly enjoyed each forkful.

We finished up with a lemon tart for Nora and a cheese plate for me, more out of gluttony than hunger. There's nothing I enjoy more to cap a meal than a good espresso and it's something I don't find that often. We ordered one each, ristretto, meaning not much water. This works in Ireland about once in fifty orders, but here we got the best espresso I've had since I was last in Italy, just perfect. 'It's like liquid chocolate,' said Nora, and it was. Essence of coffee - an ideal end to a very good meal.

If you do as we did you can eat well and plentifully for under €130 for two, which may not be at the cheaper end of the market, but the quality is far above average. Nice to know it's almost on my doorstep, give or take 10 miles.