Via Veneto 2, Italian Restaurant, Gorey, Wexford.

I've mentioned my fondness for Via Veneto in Enniscorthy before, so it should come as no surprise that when I heard Paolo Fresilli had opened up Via Veneto 2 in Gorey, I had to go and visit. It was easy enough to find -- coming from the Dublin direction, you turn left at the main traffic lights on Gorey's main street and it's maybe 100 metres down on your right. Actually, you'll see two premises with Via Veneto written above them, the restaurant proper and a café next door. They're both part of a new building complex, the façade nicely finished in polished granite.

I'd arrived with Jasper Reynolds, who is a life-long vegetarian. One of the good things about Italian cuisine is that it caters well for vegetarians. The Italians love vegetables and have some delicious ways of preparing them, so Jasper was happy to come.

Inside, it's all very modern and clean, and the large photographs of Rome and Italian movie stars, plus how the tables were set, gave the interior very much the feel of a trattoria in Italy.

We opened our menus and the first page has a mission statement, which begins: "We have decided to faithfully reproduce, without making any changes, the recipes that we know and treasure." Now, if anything is designed to make me happy, that is. All I needed to know now was if the food was going to match the mission statement.

The wine list is quite long, all Italian and well-chosen. It's divided into three main sections: north, central and south, dividing the wines geographically as well as by colour. Most of the wines fall into the €20-€30 bracket, but there are wines here for the cognoscenti, such as Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Barolo. We settled on a decent red from the Campania region, the Aglianico, which was priced at €26.

Choosing the antipasto was easy. Right next to our table was a whole prosciutto, and not just any old prosciutto, but a San Daniele one -- probably the best of its kind. This was obviously not for Jasper, so he ordered a parmigiana while I feasted on hand-cut slices of San Daniele and cubes of fresh Parmesan cheese. Jasper's parmigiana, with layers of aubergine, mozzarella and tomato sauce, was well made and presented well on the plate.

I'd decided that I'd have my dinner the Italian way -- antipasto, then a pasta dish, then a main course. Jasper followed suit, so after our antipasti, Jasper ordered the tortelloni -- pasta filled with spinach and ricotta, served in a cream reduction sauce -- and I had the lasagne Emiliane.

There was a tempting special, homemade pasta alla chitarra, which is fresh pasta cut on a device called a chitarra. That's the Italian word for guitar, and the device is called that because it's a frame with steel strings strung across it. But tempting as it was, we made other choices.

The starters were superb; Jasper's tortelloni were quite delicious. It's not a difficult recipe to do, but it does taste very good. I had excellent lasagne, made exactly as you'd get it in the Emilia-Romagna -- the region of Italy that includes Parma, home to cheese and hams.

And so to the main courses. Jasper had ordered a vegetarian pizza and I'd ordered a classic dish, the saltimbocca alla Romana, which is a veal dish done with prosciutto, sage leaves and white wine. While my dish was perfect, Jasper's pizza was less so. A part of its topping was slices of courgettes, but they were slightly bitter, which ruined the taste. We discussed the fact that if Jasper had instead ordered either of two classic pizzas, the Margherita or the Marinara, he would have had a much better experience.

With three courses under our belts, desserts were out of the question, so we finished with excellent espressos, which I was delighted to see priced at €1.50 instead of the more usual €2.50 or even €3. This was a meal that lived up to its promise of authenticity, and I'm delighted, because Gorey is much easier for me to get to than Enniscorthy. Our bill came to €115.60.