This week at a seminar on the state of Irish cuisine organised by 'The Dubliner' magazine, there was an unsurprising consensus among the panel that things have been getting better for a long time now. Those of us with long memories will recall the gastronomic dessert of the 60s and then the relentless drive for improvement that has taken place since then. It really came home to me this week when I found myself enjoying a very good meal in Co. Cavan. The improvement in restaurants and cooking standards has been countrywide and across the board, just look at Waterford or the explosion of good restaurants in Cork.

I'd gone to Clover hill, a pretty little stone-built village not far from Cavan town to meet Nevin McGuire, the well-known television chef whose own excellent restaurant is also in Co. Cavan. Nevin and I are judges in the Rosemount Young Restaurant Manager of the Year competition, and this visit to Cloverhill and The Olde Post, the object of our visit, was part of our duties as judges.

The Olde Post used to be the Cloverhill post office, hence its name. It's set back from the road surrounded by a well-tended garden and manicured lawns. Once inside the door there's a bar and small lounge where you can have a pre-dinner drink and peruse the menu. There are several choices on offer - there's the 5 course set dinner at €48, the 7 course set dinner at €65, a vegetarian menu and lastly you can dine à la carte. To give you an idea of what there is, here's a little of what the 5 course menu contains. Salmon gravadlax, a bacon and cabbage terrine, crispy duck wontons and beef carpaccio are some of the starters, there's a middle course of soup or a sorbet, then main courses of salmon, duck, a fish of the day, sirloin steak, roast rabbit and mallard with braised cabbage.

As you can see from that list, the choices have been well selected to appeal to most palates, from the adventurous to the conservative. Neither Nevin nor I had the appetite to go the for the five-course menu, so we chose à la carte. To start Nevin picked Dublin Bay prawns in ketaffi pastry followed by the fish of the day, which was Dover sole. I chose a special of seared tuna and followed it with rabbit.

The wine list is a joy to look through after the overpriced lists of Dublin. It's a fairly long list, the wines are well spread by type and nationality and the prices are very modest. Here's a few: a Gigondas for €26, a Gewurztraminer Reserve for €21 and a Spanish Laguna Gran Reserva 1996 for €23. Eventually we settled for a Sancerre from Blondelet, which was listed at €33.

Before we had our starters we were presented with an amuse bouche each, a small tasting of the beef carpaccio. This pleased me, since it was my second choice of starter and I was delighted to be able to try it. It was served with a rocket and Parmesan salad, nicely dressed with good oil, so it made a good start to our meal. Throughout the meal Nevin and I did what all good foodies should, and shared tid-bits and morsels to each other, so we both tasted all of our choices.

Our starters arrived, the prawns for Nevin and the seared tuna for me. The tuna was more cooked than seared, but it presented well. Nevin's prawns looked and tasted great - the ketaffi pastry gives the impression that the prawns have been wrapped in shredded wheat, but the mixture of tastes and textures was very successful.

The main courses looked wonderful. A large Dover sole almost overlapped lapped Nevin's plate. It had been simply done; pan fried and served with garlic butter. I wasn't completely convinced by this dish - Dover sole these days is something of a rarity and it's a subtly flavoured fish, so making it taste of garlic seems to me to waste the taste of the fish. Still, garlic butter is very tasty, so between us, and despite my intellectual reservations, we finished it. My rabbit came served as a ballotine, and up to now whenever I had it served like that it's been dry and hard to chew. This ballotine was truly excellent, the boned loin was still moist and succulent and was perfectly cooked.

To finish our meal Nevin picked the hot chocolate truffles and I had the rhubarb crumble. The hot baked truffles were wonderful: made to look like little piggies, their fat backsides containing the oozing chocolate sauce. My crumble was a refined version of the usual fare, daintily served and light in texture it made an excellent end to my meal.

After the meal we spoke to Geroid Lynch, the chef proprietor with his wife Tara, and I was happy to learn that they're being supported by the people of Cavan. That's part of the change in Ireland as well, the fact that people are increasingly looking for good food and are prepared to make a drive to get it. I thought the Olde Post is doing a fine job - it's bringing well made food to Co. Cavan and it supports local suppliers of raw ingredients, all of whom are listed on the menu. If this is the direction new Irish cuisine is going in, I'm all in favour of it. The bill for the two of us came to €133.50.