There are things that remain ultimately unknowable. I'm not thinking here about deep philosophical constructs, but something a little more mundane. I'm wondering what are the criteria that make a restaurant a success. Just like in the movie business there are no hard and fast rules; you can get a great location, a good chef, a careful menu, competitive prices - and the enterprise fails. There are imponderables that cannot be quantified, there's an element of magic to what makes a dining room feel like a good place to be in.

I mention this because there are dining rooms in Dublin that change, chameleon-like, with some regularity. What tends to happen is that an optimist moves into a failing restaurant, injects a large amount of energy and enthusiasm, and hopes to change history. 'Town' is a case in point. It's underneath Mitchell's Wine Merchants in Kildare street, a space that in my reviewing years has been 'Mitchell's', 'Bruno's' and now 'Town'. It's an old adage in the restaurant business that getting people to go either up or down stairs to dine is difficult. It seems that diners prefer dining at ground level, so to get them to confront stairs means that the restaurant has to offer something that makes that effort worthwhile.

The space that 'Town' occupies is long and thin, a shape that makes the task of the designer a hard one. What has changed in this new incarnation is that the tunnel effect has been cleverly minimised by thoughtful design and layout. The colour scheme too is pleasing, plain blocks of neutral colour, like fashionable mushroom, and simple, but effective lighting. Despite having increased the number of available seats, there's no sense of crowding, the tables are far enough from one another for comfort and privacy.

I got there on a Thursday night without a reservation. I'd reasoned to myself that a large restaurant on a Thursday night in bleak January would hardly be packed to capacity. I arrived at the door, where there's a few tables near a bar counter which act as a reception area, and noticed that the place seemed to be brimming with people. This was slightly worrying, as I was accompanying Naomi Parsons, a lady who has spent the past few years cooking on the French Riviera, and who I wanted to impress. Being turned away at the door wouldn't really have cut it. I was lucky, we got what seemed to be the last remaining table, surrounded by large tables of happy diners.

This too gave me a tinge of apprehension. I can still remember serving large tables of people in my own restaurant years ago, and it's a logistical nightmare. No matter how hard you try, other tables get held up while the big one gets served. Still, I kept these thoughts to myself and we turned to the menus. On the first page the listing start with 'aperitivi', so you know at once that the menu is going to have an Italian feel to it. The wine list confirms this - there's a preponderance of Italian wines, some of them interesting and unusual. It's not a long wine list, but I could easily have found five wines that I liked. The prices are clustered around €30, although there are four house wines under €21. Nestled among the reds was Ornellaia's second wine, Le Volte, priced at €29.95; a big, robust wine that satisfied Naomi's palate as well as mine. We also ordered a bottle of San Pellegrino.

Picking starters was difficult. There were lots of dishes that I liked - but we settled on the quail for Naomi and crabcakes for me. Main courses were a little more complex because while we were deciding, the fish of day changed from monkfish, to skate, to sea-bass. Before it changed again, Naomi chose the bass and I decided to test the Italian theme by choosing the osso buco.

Considering how busy the place was, the service was surprisingly prompt. We'd only just begun dipping our bread into a little ramekin of olive oil when the starters arrived. Just as well, I thought, since oil for dipping bread into ought to better than the bland commercial oil that was on the table.

Naomi's quail was perfectly cooked, just a little underdone, and was very nicely flavoured. I don't usually get much luck when ordering fish or crab cakes, but these were good; soft, moist and tasting of crab. The main courses arrived, Naomi being presented with a good-sized bass, while I got a traditional osso buco. The presentation of these two dishes wasn't quite as polished as the starters were, but the fish was cooked well and nicely flavoured, while my osso buco was a big success. Apart from the exact cut of shin beef that is required, it came with the traditional gremolata - a mix of parsley, garlic and lemon zest - making the dish as good as any I've had in Italy. What especially made me happy was the accompanying risotto with carrots and peas, which was quite simply, delicious.

Being well fed like this meant that desserts didn't tempt either of us, but we did have two good espressos. Unlike many places, 'Town' does understand what a 'short' espresso is and you get a ristretto when you ask for one, so full marks for that. The bill for the night came to €106.75 with no service charge, which seemed fair to me. I suspect that 'Town' will be with us for a while.