I'm sitting here looking through my receipts from my Continental holiday. It's the sort of exercise that can seriously disturb you - not because I overloaded my credit cards, but because I didn't. I know it's becoming a mantra, but after Irish prices everywhere else seems cheap. Here's one from France, deep in the Languedoc. A three-course dinner for three people plus wine, beer, coffees and after dinner drinks - €42.20. Another from Italy just outside Pisa; a three-course dinner for four people plus wine, beer, coffees for €83.50. Down in the Italian sticks that I call home, it becomes even cheaper. The American Bar in my home town of Gallinaro will wine and dine you for a fixed €10 a head - as much wine as you want, as much food as you want. It's cheaper to eat here than cook at home.

I know, don't ask. I had to come back. The Food and Wine awards were on in the Four Seasons and as a judge my presence was required. It was a bit like a re-run of this year's Academy Awards when Peter Jackson kept going to the podium to collect yet another Oscar for The Lord of the Rings. On this day it was Ross Lewis of Chapter One who collected a total of five gongs on behalf of his team, a truly remarkable achievement. If there were an award for feeding over 300 people extraordinarily well, it would go to The Four Seasons.

So being back, it was time to get to work again, after you've been so well entertained by George Hook. I really wanted to go Frank's, which is a place that's been on people's lips for the past couple of months and I wanted to catch up with Michael Colgan, who I haven't seen for a while. I persuaded him to come dinner with a friend of his, Noelle McCarthy and we met up there. Frank's is on Grand Canal Quay, an area of Dublin that's going through some major refurbishment. It's on the ground floor of the Malting Tower, more or less opposite Esat's headquarters.

The Malting Tower is a fine old stone edifice that butts up against the railway bridge that crosses the Quay. The dining room is in two parts; when you walk in you find yourself in a bright room - made more so by a wall of mirrors on the opposite wall that gives a lot of reflected light as well as a sense of space. There's a horseshoe bar with seating on both sides of it and there's a tunnel that extends from this room, which serves as a dining area. The tunnel, I discovered later, runs underneath the railway line. Whenever a train passes overhead there's a low level rumbling and the low level frequencies make tiny tremors throughout the room, the tables and the chairs. I quite liked this effect while we dined in the tunnel part, and the designers have made this difficult space attractive with a dark blue textile ceiling that arches over the room and with pleasing lighting. Before the advent of the smoking ban this low-ceilinged room would never have worked, but the in the new clean air environment it works well.

I settled into the wine list, which is reasonably long and has a good selection of wines from around the world. There's a higher mark-up than the 100% you'd like to find, the median price being closer to €30 than to €20, although on the last of the four pages are the six house wines, which are priced around €20. Michael was in the mood for a Sauvignon Blanc and so it seems were many other diners, since our first choice was out of stock and our second had only one bottle left. Still, we enjoyed the Marques de Riscal Sauvignon, which was listed at €23.50.

The menu takes a while to go through since you can choose many kinds of meals and snacks from it. The sections are: starters, salads, main courses, sandwiches (open and closed), eggs and side orders, so you could choose a simple snack or a full meal from this versatile menu. Michael had had a good lunch so he wasn't very hungry, Noelle was in a hurry so she only wanted one course, and I was starving having eaten not a thing all day long. This accounts for our choices. Noelle chose a Thai prawn dish from the daily specials, Michael picked the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, I chose potted shrimp to start and a cheeseburger and chips for my main course.

The potted shrimp arrived with some thin toast slices and we all picked away at it - not your classic potted shrimp, but one with some added spice. Good, too. Throughout this meal we got courteous and slick service - for example our water glasses were kept topped up continually. When our main courses arrived we were well-pleased. Lovely creamy scrambled eggs for Michael, although curiously the smoked salmon was separate in slices, rather than chopped up and cooked with it; a very tasty prawn dish for Noelle, and a big burger smothered in cheese for me. My burger came with chips which looked home-made and which were subject to predation from my fellow diners, but my side order of rocket salad was left alone and I got to eat all of it.

The non-drivers wanted more wine, so it was back to the wine list for another choice; this time the New Zealand 'Nautilus', another Sauvignon Blanc priced at €30.95, a nicely structured wine that serves New Zealand's reputation well. By the time we'd finished eating our main courses we were ready only for coffees and Frank's do a decent espresso, so I had two. They finished off a good meal, that was simple and well made and cost €123.50. I liked Frank's; for a one-course meal and a glass of good wine it has few competitors.