Last week I was banging on about value for money, but I don't think I banged on about it enough, so I'm going to take a second bite at it this week. But before I do, I want to define some terms, since value for money can mean a lot a different things to different people. For me it hasn't got anything to do with how much I spend. You can get value for money in a restaurant at €100 a head and you can get value for money when you get a bar lunch for €5. It all depends on what you get for your money. I believe that in a restaurant, value for money is comprised of four elements: the food, the service, the room and the price. Amazing food, impeccable service and a beautiful room can be good value at €100 a head. Good food simply served in a clean but plain room, can be good value at €5. The point is that value changes with your circumstances.

You don't need to tell me that Ireland is an expensive country to eat out in. It's expensive across the board, but if we accept that, we can still distinguish between places that offer value (by Irish standards) from those that don't. A point that needs to be hammered home is that places offering value for money can be found across the entire price spectrum. What worries me is that when people find a mediocre restaurant charging high prices, they might assume that better restaurants will necessarily cost more. That's really when an over-priced restaurant serves the entire industry badly. It creates the idea that Ireland is composed only of rip-off eating houses, and that really isn't true.

There has been a very real move in the past year by restaurants towards offering value to their customers, of which the most common example is the early-bird menu. Some of these around the city offer remarkable value, so if you're one of the majority who needs to watch what you spend, then these value menus can make the difference between going out to eat or staying at home.

Right. Enough generalisations. This week I found value for money in Ranelagh. It's a great story, so I'm going to tell it to you. If you wanted to start a seafood restaurant in Dublin, you'd find yourself competing on the fish market with the Continentals, who pay high prices for good fish. Ireland, especially the west coast, has an abundance of clean and nutrient-rich water. The south and west coasts are blessed by the Gulf Stream, that flow of warm water that comes from the Gulf of Mexico, so the seas there are rich in fish. Yet the vast majority of that fish is exported, we never get to see it. So when Ouzo's decided to open a mid-price fish restaurant, buying the fish at the market wasn't a starter. Instead the enterprising people who run it bought themselves the MFV Phoenix, a 21-foot licensed fishing boat, which works out of Dingle. It's the only restaurant that I know in Ireland that catches its own fish.

This lack of any middle-men in its food chain means that lobsters and crabs caught at midday off Valentia Island, are in Ranelagh on the menu that night at extraordinarily reasonable prices. Go there between 5 and 7 on Mondays to Saturdays and you can have the 'Great Crab and Lobster Feast'. A choice of four starters - lobster bisque, crab claws, lobster tortellini or crab-stuffed mushrooms followed by a choice of lobster and crab salad, crab cakes, lobster chops or a 10 ounce sirloin steak topped with crab claws. That'll cost you €23.95. If you know of anywhere on the Continent that'll give you lobster and crab for that price, I'd like to hear about it.

I went there with my daughter Isabella and her friends Dave O'Hara and Jill Sorohan. We found it easily enough, it's above McSorley's Pub on Ranelagh Road. It's a big dining room, simple tables and chairs, a wood and mosaic floor, and fish tanks dividing the room on half. I peered into them wondering were we going to select the lobster that we would eat, but no, they had tropical fish inside.

We sat down and read our menus. I started with the wine list, which is average in length and reasonably priced. But for even better value there was a short list of specials, a Yalumba Viognier at €16.95, a Dopff and Irion Riesling at €23.95 and a good Chablis for a couple of euros more. Look no more, I told myself, a good Riesling at that price is a winner.

The four of us were happy to just eat fish, so we began with the 'starter combination' at €23.95, which will easily feed three or four people. That gave us a big pile of mussels, crab claws and buffalo wings to work through - finger bowls were provided. Next Jill and Dave chose the lobster chops at €19.95, Bella chose the lobster and crab salad at €18.95 and I had the catch of the day, Dover sole, at €17.95. Lobster chops, by the way, are skewers of lobster and prawns, which were served with stir-fried noodles. I asked for my Dover sole pan-fried and on the bone, after all, if you've got fresh Dover sole, why would you want to do anything else with it? All of our food was simple, fresh, properly cooked and above all, great value. I can't say it often enough - where else in Dublin can you get a main course of lobster for €20?

We'd eaten so well that desserts didn't really tempt us, but it was Dave's birthday, so a slice of triple-chocolate cake with a candle in it was what we shared. If you're weary of high prices for mediocre food, then cheer yourself up with a lobster and crab extravaganza in Ouzo's. The bill for the four of us, with two bottles of wine, came to just under €150, only a couple of euros more than last week's bill for two. Remarkable.