It's an odd paradox: although Ireland produces no wine of its own, you can find a better selection of wines here than in most countries in Europe - especially the ones that are wine producers.

On wine-lists in Italy, France and Spain, the choice is entirely chauvinist. In Italy only restaurants with a large tourist throughput will list French wines; the French would rather die than list wines from any other country; the Germans will list the odd good Bordeaux; the Spanish behave like the French and Italians. But here, in practically any restaurant you can get good wines not only from both west and eastern Europe, but from the New World and the Antipodes as well.

That's the beauty of having no indigenous production to protect with fierce nationalistic pride. In this country we can, with an easy conscience, choose the best from wherever we please.

To some extent the same reasoning applies to our food. In countries with a strong culinary tradition like France and Italy you'd be hard put to find an ethnic restaurant outside the major cities. French and Italians have such pride in their own national cooking that they have little desire to try anything else. In Ireland, with no such hang-ups, we can choose to eat food from just about anywhere in the world, and wash it down with a choice of wines from a score of countries. It seems to me that this lack of a cultural mill-stone is what makes this country the pride of the new Europe. We don't have any objections to choosing the best from anywhere else and adopting it for our own. Ireland is currently probably the only country that could join a single European currency on present performance. Unlike the British with their Little England to protect from the predations of Johnny Foreigner, the Irish are whole-hearted Europeans, eagerly extracting from Brussels whatever they can.

What prompts these musings is that in June Ireland will assume the presidency of the European Union. Along with the presidency of the EU, we will also get a massive influx of beautifully-suited, well-mannered, staggeringly well-paid bureaucrats from all the member states for a six-month stay. What that means in practical terms is that it will harder to get a room in a hotel, and harder to get a table in a restaurant. Expect to hear a polyglot Babel at the next table, should you succeed in getting one for yourself.

Because of the lack of chauvinism here, these sleek Europeans will be able to find a restaurant representing their own national cuisine no matter where they come from. But just suppose for a moment that they feel adventurous, that they want to try something other than their own national food. They can with ease eat at a Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Greek, Italian or French restaurant, but Irish? Now there's the rub.

And if one them should stop you in the street and ask in accented English 'Where can I find good Irish food?', what will you say? Where will you send them?

I have heard it argued that real Irish cooking is home-cooking, and therefore doesn't translate readily to restaurants. I have also heard that there isn't enough variety in traditional Irish food to fill a menu. Once you've had your boxty, colcannon and coddle, that's your lot.

And yet I have in front of me 'Irish Family Food' by Ruth Ross which is packed with simple and good, traditional Irish fare. Combine these recipes with something else that Ireland has that's better than most - its raw ingredients - and you have a legacy of plain, but excellent food. It's the kind of food that I have an especial liking for; its simplicity lets the flavour of the ingredients speak for themselves.

So why is it so hard to find outside the home kitchen? Perhaps it's the obverse of the coin of national chauvinism. By being so willing to accept the good from elsewhere and integrate it into our own, we may be in danger of forgetting the good from here.