'Eaten bread is soon forgotten' goes the old saw and most meals that I've eaten in restaurants are indeed forgotten, swallowed up by that black hole that I'm pleased to call my memory. But there are meals that I've eaten that for some reason remain in my memory, meals that hit all the right buttons at the time and became indelibly inscribed into my recall. What makes them memorable? Well, they were well-made, tasted fabulous, came in happy surroundings or were simply really great value. Flying fish cooked on a beach in Barbados, a crayfish on a brai in Cape Town, an onion salad at the top of an Apennine peak, foie gras in Les Deux Garcons in Aix en Provence, truffle salad in my Italian village; all memorable for the tastes, the place and the company.

Back in the early nineties I remember my first meal in Cooke's Cafe, when Johnny Cooke had just started out on his own. I remember the meal because it was revolutionary, because it was iconoclastic, because it brought a whole new cuisine to Dublin. It's hard to imagine today, when new cuisines are thrust upon us by the week, how mould-breaking he was back then. Those restaurant staples that we take for granted: pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, goat's cheese and good breads were virtually unknown in Dublin restaurants. Cooke's Cafe was instrumental in bringing them to the Irish table.

Since those heady days Cooke's Cafe has had its ups and downs and its openings and closings - but he's back again, and I'm happy to say, back on song. I ate there before Christmas with a group of wine journalists, and decided then that a return visit was in order. This time I had Irene Keogh to keep me company, who's just back from a couple of months sailing in Australia, where she got herself an inshore captain's certificate. So what's changed in this incarnation of Cooke's? Well, the entrance for a start. I marched briskly to where it used to be and stared blankly through a window. 'The door's over here,' said the Skipper helpfully, and so we entered and were shown to our table by the same window.

The interior has been re-modelled as well and it's now a more coherent room. A bar counter is just inside the new entrance and an open kitchen is at the far end. A beautiful <it>jamon serano</it> was atop a wine barrel by the counter as yet uncut, but it did give a clue as to the changes on the new menu. Essentially the menu is now Mod-Med, dipping into Spanish, Southern French and Italian cuisines. Indeed, there are planned gourmet seasons coming specialising in each of these areas.

The Skipper knew what she wanted as a starter, as she'd had it before and thought it excellent. So the warm baby squid salad was her choice, and I examined the other possibilities. There was a Caesar salad; a spinach salad with feta, strawberries, pecans and red peppers; an antipasto platter with fruit, grilled vegetables and Parma ham; warm goats' cheese with grapes, figs and honey; roast quail; carpaccio and smoked duck breast. All the starters were priced around €10. There was a separate section of seafood starters, including oysters, mussels and clams, calamari, crab cakes and Ahi tuna, which I'd had before and which is a Sushimi dish of tuna rolled in Nori and served with a beetroot chutney. I settled on the mussels.

Main courses are divided into three sections - pastas, fish and meats, which were priced between €18 and €26. There were four pasta dishes, from which the Skipper chose the linguini alle vongole - Palourde clams - which came with a white wine, garlic, chilli and tomato sauce. The meats were chicken, Guinea fowl, duck, venison and beef all of which looked good, but there was special on of veal served with foie gras and morels. That sounded too good to miss, so I chose that.

We'd had a glass of white wine each to start with, which our waitress had recommended, called Albarino from Galicia in Spain, listed at €28. I'd tasted it before in The Ely Wine Bar and it's a really good wine, crisp and clean and brimming with flavour. Given our food choices, it seemed smart to stay with it, plus a couple of bottles of San Pellegrino.

While we waited for the starters, we were able to taste some of the breads that Cooke's do so well. When they came, our starters were very good, but Irene's squid salad was really exceptional. Getting squid to be tender isn't easy, but these rings were so tender that you could cut them with edge of the fork - an excellent dish.

Irene's main course wasn't as good a dish as mine, which verged on the sublime. Sadly, it won't be appearing on the new menu, but I can tell you it was as good a dish as I've eaten anywhere in the world. The tastes of the foie gras and the morels combined so well in a cream reduction sauce that I'm amazed that this combination isn't done more often.

We finished off our meal with good espressos and savoured what had been a very good meal. The bill came to €105.25, but you can also try the new set lunch or early-bird dinner at €17.95.