There is an extraordinarily elusive quality that a few restaurants have that I would call conviviality. There seems to be no rule that governs its appearance, no formula that guarantees its existence - it is simply sometimes there. To me conviviality is the thing that makes mid-range restaurants on the continent such fun; the large tables of extended families and friends laughing and conversing, turning a meal into the sort of communion that sharing bread is supposed to be about. This kind of thing is perhaps less frequent here in Ireland, but occasionally it can be found, hovering miasma-like in what the French like to call the ambience, waiting to settle like a benign spirit upon the diners.

It's possible that its appearance is also in part a function of the state of mind of the diners: certainly if you're in no mood to be convivial the spirit is unlikely to settle upon you. But it has to be in the room in the first place before the magic can happen. Now all of this preamble is simply to lay out the background of an extremely enjoyable evening where the spirit of conviviality settled upon us leaving us late to bed, but happy.

My friend Miriam Thornton, who runs a recruitment agency, thought that I might enjoy one of her favourite restaurants, Il Primo, and had invited me to join her and her friend Valerie Pave for dinner there. As is my habit, we arranged to meet in the Horseshoe Bar where I arrived a little early. A charming man from Malaysia engaged me in conversation until Miriam and Valerie arrived and after they had, we met more old friends, which seemed to set the tenor of the night.

Il Primo is in a small terraced house between Harcourt Street and Camden Street. When you walk in, there is a counter running the width of the room to the right of the stairs that lead up to the dining room. Between the counter and the window is just enough room for three tall tables and stools which acts as a waiting area while you study wine lists and menus. I hadn't told Miriam, I'm not sure why not, that Dieter Bergmann who runs Il Primo is no stranger to me. When I had a restaurant I used to buy my Italian wines from his long and impressive wholesale list. It's been a while since I've seen him, but his personality seems to have grown almost as much as my waist-line. He was friendly, boisterous and gregarious - not epithets that you apply often to Germans. Years spent in Ireland seem to have surgically removed his Teuton propriety, of which I could detect not even vestigial remains.

Looking around to get my bearings I was delighted to see that Johnny Cook was sitting beside me. Now if ever you wanted a recommendation for a restaurant seeing another restaurateur dining there should be sufficient. We were handed the menus, the wine list and a welcoming three glasses of Prosecco, which is a nice touch.

The wine list is heavily weighted towards Italian, but not your average Valpols and Soaves; this is a connoisseur's list of fine Friulis and super-Tuscans. These are fine wines and come with an appropriate price, the bulk of the list is between £20 and £40, although there are a few in the £10-20 range. There is also a page of Bordeaux, mostly eighties and mostly Grand Crus or Crus Bourgeois beginning at £40 and running all the way up to the heights of £580 for an '82 Latour. From this oenological constellation we eventually settled on a somewhat less bright star, the Castello di Rampolla Chianti Classico, which is a beautifully balanced and complex wine, worth every penny of its £24 price tag.

Having settled on that we worked our way down the menu. Antipasti, or starters, are between £2 and £5 and include things like bruschetta, bread and olives, tapenade and soup. In the end we had two starters between the three of us, the bread, olives and pesto dip and the day's special of Bresaola, which is like Parma ham except it's beef. Miriam was uncertain whether she should have the fettucine and mushrooms with a cream or olive oil sauce. Helpfully Dieter suggested she should have both. Valerie chose another special, which Dieter correctly described as a single raviolo - but, he added, it's a big one. I chose the saddle of rabbit, because I'm always keen to see how other people handle a rather difficult meat.

We were soon brought upstairs to the dining room which is quite small and has bright red glossed tables and wooden chairs, which are quite close together. Wooden chairs, plain pressed steel cutlery and paper napkins completed the settings. The walls are covered in a paint-effect I could best describe as Maze dirty-protest and are hung with paintings. There's a wooden floor and the noise level is high-decibel. It occurred to me that this may not be exactly the ambience I'd want for a £500 bottle of wine, but then again, that's not what we were having. The food when it came was good, the wine excellent and the service brisk and friendly. I'm not going to dwell on the food in detail because it's not what I remember as the main element of the evening. By the time we'd finished our excellent main courses that spirit of conviviality had settled firmly upon us and, as far as I could see, on everyone else as well. Dieter brought us an interesting array of post-prandial drinks and before long we were sharing them with the couple at the next table who introduced themselves as Stephen and Heather. After they had left Miriam sneakily paid for everything including the wine - which was not the deal we'd made. She had paid £112 including £48 for the wine, which was good value.

We went downstairs to find another gathering in full swing which we were persuaded to join. I met the chef, Valentino Magliocco, who comes from the same tiny village as my father did, and who was responsible for my perfectly cooked rabbit. Before any of us realised it the little hand was pointing to three and some of us had early starts a few hours hence. But it does prove the point that when that magic of food, wine and good company comes together as it should, time stops.