Have you noticed there's a growing number of low-cost café-bars springing up around Dublin? Obviously when I say 'low-cost' I mean by Dublin standards, they're still pricey by the standards of anywhere else. Still, I find it a welcome trend.

The sort of places I have in mind are places like Dunne and Crescenzi, Bar Italia, Enoteca delle Langhe, the French Paradox and some of newer wine bars like Dowlings - all places where you can get a glass of wine a plate of cheese, or cured meats, or something simple and filling without spending a fortune. Clearly there's a growing niche in the market for eateries that aren't going to charge you €100 for a meal for two.

Places like the ones I've mentioned have several things in common: a short menu that's heavy on cold dishes and dishes that don't need to be cooked, decent wine at reasonable prices and fairly Spartan furnishings and décor. I'm guessing that when Michael McDowell wants us to embrace café society instead of a pub culture, these are the sort of places that he has in mind. He can't mean the continental kind of café society. That café society exists because of reliable sunshine hours that make outdoor tables a possibility, a climatic circumstance unlikely ever to materialise in this cloudy country.

Still, the last ten days have had the odd day when I've been able turn off the heating and there's even been two nights when I switched off my electric blanket. It must have been on one of those nights - not warm by any means - but not so cold that you couldn't sit outside, that I ended up in Dublin, with my friends Hugo Jellett and Roz Murphy. It wasn't raining, there was little wind, so we went to Chez Max, which is right beside the gate to Dublin Castle that's opposite the Olympia. We seized the moment to take one of the outdoor tables, since it also meant we could smoke before, during, and after our meal. And because this lane is effectively little used, sitting at the pavement tables here means no lungfuls of diesel fumes, which I suspect may well be worse for your health than the evil weed.

Chez Max is French to its core. Everyone serving is French, they all talk in French and most of the casual customers that stopped by seemed to be French, presumably having heard about Chez Max through some sort of Gallic jungle drums. This Frenchness extends to the short menu, which is also mostly in French, although there are helpful translations into English as well. The one-page menu starts with 'tartines', which are essentially open sandwiches. Specifically they're slices of French bread with a béchamel base, served with the topping of your choice. There are five of these, and there are four salads, two platters of cold cuts of main course size, and there are always two hot dishes of the day. The tartines and the salads are all less than €6 and the main courses less than €12.50, which is about half what many Dublin restaurants are now charging.

From this Roz picked a tartine 'Montagnard', which came with baby potatoes, bacon and Reblechon cheese, Hugo had the Périgord salad, which came with croutons, red onions, olives and tomatoes, and I had the carrot and coriander soup. To follow we picked the two daily specials, the beef Bourgignon for Roz and me, with Hugo choosing the chicken Provençale.

The wine list is brief and to the point - three reds and three whites, which are priced at about €20, €25 and €30 respectively. I chose the mid-range Bourgogne 2002 red, which came at €24.50 and which went very nicely with our boeuf Bourgignon.

The starters came and we were well pleased, big helpings that made us think that perhaps we'd ordered too much food, but we persisted. A good soup and two good tartines left us contented and ready for the mains. While we waited we were entertained by the street theatre of several people attempting to park their cars in a tiny space that was a legal parking space. Bizarrely, the only person who actually succeeded in getting his car into it was a chap with a large people carrier.

The main courses were are as generously sized as the starters, but of the two dishes the beef was by far the better of the two. Hugo's chicken came in a rather watery Provençale sauce and the chicken was a little dry, but Roz and I were happy with the beef. The sauce was good enough that I used it to flavour my Basmati rice, which came separately as part of the dish.

We finished up with two desserts between the three of us, a crème brulée which was priced modestly at €4 and a raspberry tart, which was €4.50. Both of these were very good, and again, by Dublin standards very well priced. What I liked best about the meal's ending was that in Chez Max they know what an espresso is. A demi-tasse filled not even to halfway gave me a caffeine buzz that kept me sparky all the way home to Wicklow.

The bill, which included a few bottles of mineral water priced at €1.50, came to €91.60, which for three people is great value. Luckily I had some cash on me, since when I went to pay they still hadn't got their credit card machine working. If you're thinking of trying Chez Max, be warned.