Telephone: 020-7935 9311
Address: The O'Conor Don, 88 Marylebone Lane, London W1
Rating: 15.5/20

Here is a pub with a dining room, but it is not a gastro-pub. That is, it's not a gastro-pub in the sense that the House is, which I reviewed a week or so back. The Ard-Ri Dining Room has not been cleaned up, tidied up and smartened up, made smooth, bright, white and just a teensy bit identikit-modern. It is none of these things. It is what it says it is: a dining room above a pub, a glorious throwback, a touch sombre, heavyweight, dark red and dark mahogany, muffled and warm, welcoming and comfortable, sensible and hard-working.

Tad was waiting at the table when I got there. He has been a vocal supporter of the Ard-Ri for some time - in part, I think, because it shares his expansive attitude to entertainment. It seems to have an unusually cheery way with menu-making, as well. Give 36 hours' notice and you can have a stuffed saddle of lamb, fore rib of beef, roast or braised leg of lamb, game of various kinds, not to mention dressed salmon or whole lobster.

We were but two, and we had not given the requisite notice, so we made do with half a dozen Cuan oysters apiece, slippery fresh, all iodine and ozone and salt, washed down with a pint of ace Guinness served at its proper temperature, cool but not chilled (you have no idea what a rarity and a blessing that is these days), while we decided on beetroot-cured salmon with tzatziki and a rocket and citrus salad (me), and seared tuna salad with mango salsa (him); followed by traditional Irish stew (me) and braised venison with champ and roast shallots (him), with cheese for me and nothing for him to round things off.

The Ard-Ri Dining Room claims to be an Irish restaurant, and the menu trod a nimble jig around old Irish and the newer not-so-Irish. When it came to the dishes themselves, in terms of generosity and the triumph of fundamentals over form, the Irish influence was very much to the fore. My beetroot-cured salmon was cut thick, so that each purple-stained slice flopped alluringly on to my tongue. The beetroot curing wasn't just there for show, either. Its characteristic, earthy sweetness was like a glove to the fingers of fish. The tzatziki was a great idea, too, cool and crunchy alongside.

Tad's tuna was fine as these things go. Tuna is such a fashionable fish and, while it has many good qualities, I am not convinced that cutting it 3cm thick, then searing it on the outside and leaving it raw on the in, is the best way to draw them out. (Cut about 0.5cm thick, and fried briefly but fiercely, is best, if you want to know.) Still, that's the way we've got used to eating it, and Tad walloped it down with every sign of pleasure.

His next plate, the venison, was what you might describe as bursting at the seams. There was plenty of deep, dark, indulgent venison, a dune of champ studded with spring onions, a battery of glistening, bronzed, roasted shallots, and much else besides. It was a mighty mouthful in every sense.

Thank heavens for the bottle of Chteau Ksara from Lebanon, which was as lively as it was lovely, and cheap - £18.10 a bottle - by the standards of today's restaurants.

My Irish stew was problematic. Not in terms of quality and flavour. The meat was first-rate - refined, boneless neck fillet, rather than the traditional scrag end, but delightfully squidgy, with just a hint of gaminess to suggest a more mature animal - and the potatoes were the acme of the tuber, some of which had cooked to dissolution so that they thickened the gravy. But what, I thought, about carrots? Heavens, I know Irish cooks who regard carrots in an Irish stew in much the same way as the Catholic church once regarded the Albigensian heresy. And what was this? Leek? And spring onions, too? Was it ragou Irlandaise nouvelle? Actually, what did I care? It was very tasty and filling and lush.

After this, my selection of Irish cheeses was an austere way of finishing up. With the exception of an oddball, oddsbodikins, odds-and-ends cheese 'n' porter (if I understood correctly) confection, they were splendid ambassadors for the artisanal Irish cheesemakers.

And so the time finally came to leave this timeless spot. We were £79 the poorer (food: £52; drink: £27), but immeasurably richer in the simple pleasures of lively conversation fuelled by upright, virtuous and tasty food in genial, comfortable surroundings. And these days I don't come across those as often as I'd like.

· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, 6-10pm. All major credit cards.