I’ve had more emails on the whereabouts of Troy McGuire than any other chef. If you don’t already know, Troy is the chef who brought you L’Gueuleton. And if you know that, then you probably also know that he’s now cooking in the revamped Locks in Portobello. Locks, as its name suggests, overlooks the Grand Canal and from its windows you can watch the moorhens and coots squabbling over territory. It seems airier and brighter now, the light pastel walls and simple décor give it clean, crisp look. The tables are well-spaced, there’s good napery on the tables and there’s space enough to be comfortable.

I thought that to review a restaurant with such a culinary pedigree I needed a dining companion with more than a passing interest in gastronomy, so I arranged to meet Gerard Carthy from tasteofireland.com for lunch there. We settled into a window table and scanned the menu. I’ll go through it in more detail than usual because just as you’d expect from Troy, it’s an interesting menu.

The lunch menu is set out with no distinctions as to courses. There’s a listing of a dozen dishes, some of which are obviously starters and some obviously main courses, and a few that could do either job. The most expensive dish is €16.50, the cheapest is the soup at €7.50. There were two soups, an asparagus with mushroom duxelle and a potato and black bacon soup. Before you ask, the bacon isn’t black, the pig it comes from is. Then came an onion and Madeira tart with a Roquefort salad and a black pudding and apple tart tatin with leeks, priced at €12.50 and €13 respectively.

If you weren’t famished these dishes could serve as a single course, but after them the dishes were clearly main courses and were priced between €15.50 and €16.50. There was a tomato and caper salad with a pork sausage and watercress; mackerel with smoked eel, horseradish, and an apple and fennel salad; roast lamb fillet with bubble and squeak; ham hock wrapped in a cabbage leaf with mushrooms; strozzapreti pasta with braise beef shin; a spring vegetable salad with curried yoghurt; meatloaf with foie gras and Lyonnaise potatoes and lastly an hors d’oeuvre platter with meats and fish.

I got a warm glow of pleasure reading this menu, there was plenty of choice and plenty of interesting dishes. The wine list didn’t leave me feeling quite so happy. It’s a long list and there are fine wines on it, but the mark-up is fairly steep and you can turn page after page before you find a wine for under €30. They’re there, they’re just in the minority. Still, with Gerard not drinking and me driving, the wine choice ended up as one glass of Salice Salentino for €7.50.Three bottles of mineral water for €12 completed the drinks order.

Good breads came to table and we settled into our starters, the black pudding tart for Gerard and the potato and black bacon soup for me. I liked both of these dishes - the black pudding tart looked like a large crusted burger, was perfectly good and nicely flavoured. So was the soup, the small lardons of bacon giving it a rich, flavoursome taste.

Gerard had chosen the lamb fillet with bubble and squeak, that old-time favourite of cabbage and potato cake. The lamb was tender and pink and the fig and peppercorn accompaniment worked very well. I’d chosen the meatloaf, and in truth I’d go back to Locks for just this dish. Really delicious.

We finished up with a couple of coffees each, espressos for me and Americanos for Gerard, which brought our bill to €81 without service charge. What you get in Locks now is a taste of rural France, a cuisine based on careful cooking, interesting flavours and unusual combinations. Before we left I looked at the dinner menu where snail Bourguignon, pigeon biscuit and truffled honey all make an appearance. Imaginative and skilful are two words that well describe the new Locks