Last Sunday I spent the day with an English friend who lives in Clontarf. I was introduced to his flat mate from Manchester and we all got on rather well. A trip to Westwood's 50m pool and a walk along the seafront left us all rather hungry by 6pm. We had booked a table in the newly renovated 'Les Amis' on Vernon Avenue for 6.15. We met a college friend of mine outside who was joining us for the evening.

We were seated at a table just inside the door beside a radiator thankfully. The room is long and tables line the room leading to a large seating area down the back. It used to be a café but the seating and décor have upgraded to restaurant quality. A comprehensive menu offers a handful of starters (soup, garlic bread, salad, garlic mushrooms) as well as seafood, steaks, pastas and pizzas. It is, essentially, Italian, despite its name. We decided to skip starters and indulge in dessert instead. Louise chose a 9" margarita pizza with extra pepperoni (£5.95+0.75) as she had eaten earlier. The thin base was smothered in meat and she was quite happy with it. My friend Tom chose the penne Florentine (£9.95), very large chicken strips and spinach in a cream sauce. It was very nice but he did not touch the meat as he said it was too chewy. His flat mate Jonathan took the salmon steak (£9.95) which was served with a lovely sauce and accompanied by a side salad and delicious potato wedges (£1.00). He devoured the lot, though we certainly helped him out with the wedges. When I asked for some garlic mayo, the rather brusque waitress informed me that "the chef will give out to me if I ask him to make it now, when we are busy". Well, God forbid, I get you into trouble. Garlic butter, perhaps? Um, no thanks.

My 12" pescatore pizza (£10.95) had a lovely thin and chewy base, topped with mussels, salmon and I think I found one shrimp. I asked for extra vegetables and it was smothered in onions, mushrooms and green peppers. I also asked the chef to go easy on the oil (as I hate oily food) which he gladly did. However, I had to send the pizza straight back to the oven as it was cold on arrival. Three of us shared a nice bottle of white from Bordeaux (£12.50) even though we had ordered the house Chardonnay. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves having a great laugh getting to know each other. Our waitress left for the evening and was replaced by a very charming Polish waiter. We had a lot of fun asking him every conceivable question about the desserts. In the end we had profiteroles (£2.95), banoffi (£2.95) and two chocolate biscuit cakes with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce (£3.50).The fun lay in the ordering of the extra cream, ice cream and chocolate sauce on everything. Almost everything was eaten. The banoffi was smothered and cream. The biscuit cake was a huge square of just that topped with chocolate. It was quite hard but it went down a treat, especially with the ice cream and sauce! Exhaustion from swimming and laughing over whelmed us so we paid £73 for our £67 bill. I made my way happily back across the city. I will definitely make a trip back there on my next visit to Clontarf.