I worry about it, really I do. Is there such a thing as a jaded palate? A general ennui that takes over when you do anything repetitively? Does habit dull the edge of pleasure? These are the ontological questions that beset restaurant reviewers, the nagging doubts that keep us awake at night as we struggle with the essence of being.

The obverse of this coin is that freshness, novelty and surprise nourish the interest and pique the curiosity. Put another way, every now and then I find myself somewhere where my preconceptions are overturned, where my expectations are confounded and my palate is pleased in new and interesting ways. Now I mean this as no disrespect to the inhabitants of Ashbourne in County Meath, but it had never occurred to me that the words 'Ashbourne' and 'gastronomy' would ever find their way into the same sentence. That was my surprise of the week - those two words combine in the description of a Chinese restaurant called 'Eatzen'.

It was unlikely in more ways than one. I was travelling with Roisin O'Hea, who was accompanying me to dinner, when we swung a left as we headed north through Ashbourne into a whole new commercial centre. Clearly being close to Dublin has meant that Ashbourne is exploding with new growth and the development into which we'd turned was a manifestation of this. You can see the sign saying 'Eatzen' right next to the one saying 'Tesco'. It's a streetscape that we're becoming used to, the vernacular architecture of the 21st century: apartment blocks, office blocks and retail outlets all tied together not by accidents of history, but by the hand of an architect. Big developments like this tend to look similar, no matter in what town they appear.

Next door to the Tesco entrance is a lobby with a lift, and that's the entrance to 'Eatzen'. It's on the first floor and when you step out of the lift you find another lobby, which leads you to the restaurant. Whatever you'd been expecting on the way up in the lift will certainly be wrong as you take in the room. The first thing you notice is the lighting - it's not an afterthought, it's well designed. A polished wood floor, an interior separated by a sinuous, low partition wall; a mix of tables and booths and interestingly, a glass-walled private dining room that's sound-proofed. It's circular and holds a table that seats twelve comfortably, and the reason for the sound-proofing is that it also hosts a karaoke machine. A huge floral display decorated the centre of the table, which sat on a lazy Susan. Tempted as I was by the thought of Roisin's singing, we took a booth instead.

The finish of the main dining room is impressive. Apart from the attractive lighting, the table that we sat at was Italian marble, the bench seats were covered with leather, the crockery was simple and elegant, the cutlery and the chopsticks were good quality. It's pretty obvious that a lot of money has gone into this interior. All very well, I hear you say, but is the food any good? The answer to that is yes, very good.

The menus and the wine list are made of high-grade card and the menu listings are in both Chinese and in flowery English. Dishes include 'Bird of Paradise bathing in Pearls', 'The Fragrant Princess', 'The elegant Flight in Ulaanbataar' and my favourite, 'Miss Piggy in Aromatherapy'. Happily there are more prosaic descriptions of the dishes as well. Starters are priced at €7 or €8 and the main courses are divided into sections - chicken dishes are €17, beef dishes are €20, duck dishes are €19 and lamb dishes are €22. There's a page of fish dishes as well, with prices ranging from €20 to €24.

The wine list is shortish, but then you could have beer, as 'Eatzen' has a full license. Despite being short, the wines are well-priced and are mostly below €25. We dithered a while, we made a deal, and chose one of the most expensive wines on the list, a 1998 Barolo from Bava at €55, which turned out to be very good. A couple of bottles of mineral water completed our drinks order.

Roisin started with 'Golden Promise in Dragon Whiskers', which were perfectly enormous prawns wrapped in fried noodles. I had 'Delicious Flight', which were chicken wings stuffed with prawns, which looked like drumsticks and tasted really good. They were presented for eating with your fingers, which is a kind of hands-on dining that I enjoy. A couple of dips accompanied these, a hot and spicy and a dark and interesting. We shared tastes of both of these dishes and I found them to be nicely flavoured as well as prettily presented.

For main courses Roisin chose the 'Tropical Fantasy', which was duck with mango and I had the 'Adventure in Beijing', which was lamb and spring onions Peking style. To go with this we'd ordered fried rice, fried noodles and Kailang greens with ginger. Both of our dishes were very good, although I did prefer my lamb dish, which was as well.

We didn't have desserts, but we did enjoy one of the range of Chinese teas that are on offer. A teapot on a warmer kept our dainty cups topped up with Southern Chinese tea. All in all this meal, which was served with efficiency and professionalism, was of a quality I'd only before encountered in Singapore. It wasn't just the lack of culinary cliches - like shredded duck with plum sauce - it was novel, skilful and very sophisticated cuisine. Finding such authentic and excellent Chinese food in Ireland would be remarkable in itself, but finding it outside the capital made was all the more of a surprise. The bill was €138 including the wine at €55.