Gordon Ramsay at Powerscourt

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at The Ritz Carlton has seen  a lot of change in the last year or so. New head chef Peter Byrne hails from Chapter One, and indeed the whole hotel is now under the direction of Damian O'Riordan, who did a wonderful job in The G. Paolo popped along for dinner, and found some wonderful food and service.

The dining room itself has had a makeover since it was first styled and is now a pleasing room with a large outdoor terrace and a limited view of the Sugar Loaf Mountain.

What you notice at once is that there's plenty of space between the tables; the napery, cutlery and glassware are all high quality; and the service is both professional and charming.

This is by any standards fine dining, so you won't find an early-bird menu, just an à la carte.

Roughly speaking, the starters run from €10 to €15 and the mains are all around €30, to which you add side orders at €5 each.

The wine list is long, broad in scope and a minefield. Just suppose you wanted to spend a lot of money on wine. You could have a Château Mouton 1982 for €2,200, which retails at around €800. On the other hand, you could have a Romanée-Conti 1993 for €8,400, which is a couple of hundred euros less than the retail. If you plan to spend thousands on wine, bring a reference book.

We just wanted a glass each, so from a whole page of wines by the glass we got an Australian Chardonnay, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and an Italian Nero d'Avola, which came to €26.

So to the food. The first thing that arrived was a demitasse of soup as an amuse-bouche -- butternut squash with a little banana and a touch of cinnamon -- which was delicious.

For starters, we had pan-roasted quail, an onion tart and a foie-gras parfait with smoked chicken.

Even if I hadn't known that the new head chef was Peter Byrne, ex of Chapter One, the quail would have been a clue. Presented exactly as in Chapter One, the legs and wings had a French trim, so that you could eat them like a lollipop.

These were three excellent starters, beautifully presented and expertly done.

For mains, we'd chosen a dish of hake, a mixed plate of outdoor raised pork and a cèpe mushroom risotto.

As side dishes, we had new potatoes and two different mashed potatoes -- one smoked, the other not. You read that right, smoked mashed potato. It turns out the butter in it was smoked, but the result was really good; an unusual and very tasty way of doing mash.

I got a taste of all three of these dishes and they were all good. The risotto was properly cooked and not al dente, as some Irish chefs seem to think is right; the hake was cooked à point and the pork was probably the star dish.

There were several elements on the plate -- apart from the ubiquitous belly, the loin was served sliced and, unusually, was not dry, and the white pudding, more like a boudin blanc, was superb.

As well as Peter Byrne as head chef, the Ritz-Carlton also has a gifted pastry chef called Ludovic Lantier, whose creations have impressed me before. Clearly, we were not going to give the desserts a miss.

Between us we had a nougat, some profiteroles and a mixed plate of ice creams and sorbets. The profiteroles had an unusual texture, more like honey crisp than standard choux pastry, and they came with a classic rum-and-raisin ice cream.

The sorbets were served on slate -- not the most practical receptacle as they began to melt -- and the nougat came with a delicious raspberry ice cream.

Probably Ireland's most expensive coffees finished the meal at €5.30 each, and they brought our bill to €226.90. Expensive, yes, but in line with the quality of the food and the service.