This week I had the pleasure of introducing some of my favourite chefs at the National Food Fair in the RDS - Clodagh McKenna, Derry Clarke, Roberto Morsiani and Kevin Thornton all of whom presented some fine dishes in the Kitchen Theatre section. Lots of Ireland's small producers of specialist products were there, with an array of products all made with passion and enthusiasm. It's my belief that these are the very people who need to be encouraged - they enrich our food chain with real food. No additives, no preservatives, no colourings; just food as nature intended it.

It was talking to the various foodies assembled in the RDS that another hoary old topic came up. How is it that I can go to a restaurant and give it a decent review, and then a few weeks later someone else goes there and gets a mediocre, or worse, meal? I'm asked this often enough that it deserves a detailed answer. The first thing to bear to mind is that no chef can produce exactly the same meal twice. A kitchen isn't a science laboratory, a moment's distraction can turn a perfect piece of fish into an overcooked one. But there are more likely causes for difference than this. Firstly, any restaurant that's open for lunch and dinner will have more than one chef. The chef who cooked for me may not be the chef who cooked for you. This can cut two ways; I reviewed Hunter's Hotel some years ago and got a surprisingly mediocre meal. Many people were taken aback by my poor review, but later I discovered that both the head chef and his sous chef were off the night that I went. On the other hand I went to Bruno's in Kildare Street some years ago and got a remarkable meal where previously I'd had average ones. The reason? A new chef called Garret Byrne had arrived and had transformed the kitchen.

Garret subsequently left for Chapter One and Bruno's never quite regained those glory days. It closed down and now it's 'Town'. If you follow the column alongside this, 'Chef Special', you'll see that all chefs are peripatetic. The move from kitchen to kitchen endlessly, honing their skills. Which is a second reason why what I review and what you subsequently eat, may be very different. The chef who cooked for me may well be cooking somewhere else by the time you try the restaurant.

This is unlikely to be the case with this week's restaurant, which works to a formula and consequently should be immune from the above variables. I'll confess right now that I have no great regard for formulaic restaurants - as a rule I prefer a passionate chef/proprietor who oversees everything leaving his kitchen. But this week I was off to dinner with my son, Rocco, and I thought that we could go somewhere that aims to please the young, rather than jaded roués like me: hence the Hard Rock Café. I'll admit too that as we walked toward it my heart was sinking. What can you say about a burger and chips?

The interior gave me a lift at once. It's busy and buzzy, flat screens surround the walls with music videos, the music fills the room from large Bose speakers hanging from the ceiling. We were sat at a table for two in a kind of a booth, with more than enough room at the table for all our bits and bobs.

Looking around it was clear that not all the customers were in the flush of youth. Apart from me, there were men with grey pony-tails, old rockers and middle aged hippies as well as the gilded youth. Here's the odd thing: music played through large speakers is easy to hear, but weirdly doesn't seem to block out conversation. Both Rocco and I loved some of the videos - the two Jimmys, vintage Page and Hendrix, mixed with less exotic eighties stuff like Europe.

There's quite a long menu of nibbles, sandwiches and salads, but we chose the Jumbo Combo as a starter, which was a mix of all of them, that we shared. Good onion rings, really excellent spring rolls, very tasty chicken wings and breaded chicken fillets came with four dips. Okay, we muttered to ourselves that the chicken probably wasn't organic, but hey, what was on the plate tasted good.

We followed this ample starter with a steak each, a New York Striploin for Rocco and a Ribeye for me - both were tender, cooked rare exactly as we'd asked for, and at €23 and €21 respectively, really good value as well. Each steak came vegetables and a mash potato volcano filled with gravy. Put that lot on plate in Shanahan's and you'd be paying nearly three times as much.

After all of that no dessert was possible, but I finished with best made espresso I've had in Dublin ever - absolutely perfect. We'd have got out fairly cheaply with what I've described, but I'd foolishly said to Rocco earlier it'd be hard to spend €100 here at these prices. 'Don't worry, dad,' he said, 'we can do it,' so he finished with a couple of B52s, which added to our beer and water brought the drinks total to €47.15, the food part costing €67.45. A 5% service charge wasn't enough for the very professional service we'd had, so I added a tenner to it. Simple food, really well done and reasonably priced makes this formula a winner.