Twenty years is a long time to be at the top of any business; twenty years at the top of the restaurant business is a remarkable achievement. Patrick Guilbaud (he pronounces this as 'gweelbo') has just celebrated this many years of catering to Dublin's gourmets. If you know the restaurant you may have met Patrick or Stefan, but the hidden part of the trio, the man who directs the kitchens, is Guillaume Lebrun.

Guillaume comes from a family of bakers and early in his life, when life in France was not as prosperous as it is today, his father pointed out to him that to be sure of never going hungry, a life as a chef was a good strategy. The option of baking was not available to him, because although he loves baking bread, he's allergic to flour. It's a fact of life in the world of chefs that there's no easy way to the top, the only way is a slow climb up the ladder. Like many others, Guillaume began at the bottom, washing pots and slowly learning his trade. By his early twenties he was in Paris, working in the two-starred 'Pre Catalan'. It was while he was there that he saw an advertisement looking for a chef in Dublin. 'I felt it was time that I moved on, that I tried something new,' he told me. He phoned the number and spoke to Patrick Guilbaud, who was just about to open his restaurant Dublin. He liked what he heard and on the 9th of November 1981, he set foot in Ireland.

He wasn't instantly happy. It came to the point that he told Patrick he wanted to leave. 'He said to me 'You must stay. Stay and you won't regret it,' so I stayed. He wanted me to take the job of chef de cuisine, but I was worried I wasn't ready for it. He said 'try it, let's see if it works' so I did.' History proves that it did work and he hasn't regretted it.

He told me that from the start the emphasis was on quality, which prompted my next question of what quality meant for him. 'It starts with the ingredients. Without first-rate ingredients you can't have quality on the plates. A sea-bass, fresh from the sea, needs little to bring out the flavour.' I recalled the dictum of the French gastronome Curnon Sky, who said 'Things should taste of what they are.' Guillaume nodded in agreement. 'It's true. When your ingredients are good, there's no need to disguise their flavour.'

For Guillaume the next step in the process towards good food is a clarity, a simplicity in the preparation. 'You don't need to fill a plate with flavours, because then you don't know what you're eating any more. I like to get three tastes onto the plate and I like using spices. Also I'm careful about what I cook. I only cook what I like, and I only cook what I know. There's a fashion now that I dislike for giving only tastes. In some places it gets to the point that all you get is tastes. Nothing to eat, just tastes.'

So how does he create his dishes? 'I could never have been a pastry chef. For patisserie you have to measure and weigh everything. I like the freedom to experiment. But it's a strange thing. I develop a dish and we taste it the kitchen and it works. Then Patrick and I taste it in the restaurant and it tastes completely different. Then we re-work it until it tastes right in the restaurant.'

We talked a little of the business end of restaurants. 'Our restaurant isn't cheap, but there are 45 people employed here. We seat maybe 50-60, so the overheads are large. I know of great chefs in France who made great dishes that cost £10 which they sold for £12. They're not in business any more.'

I wondered does he go to other restaurants when isn't working. 'Not often. I like L'Ecrivain and Bruno's in Kildare Street, but when I'm not working I go shooting. My passion is pigeon shooting. It's like fishing, when you're waiting for the pigeons you think only of that, your mind is not on work.' So does he switch off totally at the weekends? 'Well I still come in when we're closed on Sundays and Mondays, even if it's just to look around and check that everything's okay. My other great passion is paintings. Whenever I have some money to spend that's what I buy.'

Like me, Guillaume has become an adopted Irishman. He married an Irish girl and has three bilingual children. Looks like Guillaume and his restaurant are here to stay.