It was a perfect idyll. We sat by the water's edge as the Blackwater flowed gently upstream - a sight that unnerved me slightly until I realised that it's tidal in Villierstown. For it was by Villierstown Quay that we were sat, the broad expanse of river at our feet, two herons squabbling over territory a little to the left, a couple of terns wheeling silently above, the odd fish-rise on the dappled surface of the water, and a horizon of cumulonimbus through which the odd shaft of sunlight broke, like the rays of the Buddha. A gentle breeze ruffled the water's surface and rustled the osiers' leaves as this wide and long panorama unfurled before us. The only sounds were those as timeless as the view, and this is precisely the sort of view, I thought, that will prompt me to wax lyrical - if not pastoral - when it comes to writing this up. And anyway, you wouldn't expect me to write about the restaurant in paragraph one.

I was sitting with my friend Gill Hall, whose family have been in Villierstown for a lot of generations. They have a sense of history here, I discovered, their millennium project at the town's cross-roads is a chunk of marble upon which is engraved the surnames of all the families living here in the year 2000. Nice idea, I thought, and sure enough, Hall is on it. There had been some talk of taking canoes on the river, but the tide was low and Gill felt that natty Italian shoes (mine) would fare badly in the Blackwater's sticky littoral mud, were we try to launch the canoes before high tide. Reluctantly I took her advice and instead of canoeing we watched the bucolic endeavours of Mother Nature before our appointment in Dungarvan.

Now here's a thing; I now know I was genetically pre-programmed to be a passenger in a car. I can, and do drive, but I'm at my happiest when being driven. And I'm a perfect passenger - I'm not nervous, I never give directions or advice, I just sit there beaming, delighted not to drive. So Gill got no argument from me when she said that she'd drive - she knows the roads round here woman and girl, and anyway it also meant I wasn't going to be restricted to two glasses of wine. Heaven.

We had time for a quick scenic tour of Dungarvan before arriving at the restaurant and the sea-front has had the kind of make-over that's becoming more prevalent. Old warehouses are smart new flats, everywhere seems to had a lick of paint, the whole place basking in the glow of the new prosperity. We found The Tannery easily enough, embedded within the sproutings of new developments, and stood outside for a moment. It's a four-storey stone building that looks like it might have been a warehouse. 'Tschh, Paolo, whaddya mean warehouse? It was a tannery. That's how it got its name. Tschh.' Oh yeah? I knew that.

Inside you find a very smart modernist look, bright and airy and quite hard-edged. 'People round here say that it's like a Dublin bistro,' said Gill. Maybe, but you get much bigger tables and more space between them in The Tannery than you would in Dublin. The dining room proper is upstairs, where we were much taken by a nifty lighting effect that makes the walls go from grey to duck-egg blue. Gill, a designer by trade, was intrigued, but we never did get to the bottom of how it worked.

She'd taken up position on a red upholstered plush banquette looking at the restaurant, while I, as ever, faced the wall. Any descriptions I pass onto you are necessarily Gill's, whose first observation was 'Oh look, I know those people at that table - I'll go and say 'hello'', which left me with the wine list. It's a good list, long enough to cover most tastes and pockets and, as seems to be the norm outside Dublin, has a reasonable mark-up. Gill drinks white wine by preference, so I concentrated on those. It leapt off the page at me, Gill's favourite wine, a Pinot Grigio. Sadly it was out of stock, so it was back to the list. I'd almost settled on the reliable, but possibly unadventurous Macon Lugny, when the lady who was doing front of house said 'May I make a suggestion? The Baixas from Galicia is very good.' On the assumption that she knew this list better than me I accepted the suggestion and got an interesting wine for £19.50, a pleasant change in style from the sock-you-in-the-mouth whites that are increasingly there to satisfy the market.

Starters run from £6 to £7.50 and main courses run from £12.50 to £17.50, and from them Gill picked the cannelloni of goats cheese to start and the roast hake with spicy peperonata to follow, while I picked Bayonne ham and then quail to follow. I enjoyed my starter, but Gill was enthusiastic about hers. Just as described, it was a crispy tube filled with the most creamy goats cheese I've come across. I could see where her enthusiasm was coming from. Her main course of hake was also very good, the fillet lightly scored and roasted just enough to leave the fish tender. Perhaps I've been spoiled recently by getting quail off the bone twice - here there was a brace of nicely underdone whole quail, but that means it's not easy to separate the flesh from the carcass. Very tasty, but hard work.

We'd been eyeing the desserts that passed our table and they looked great, but as ever there was only appetite enough for one between two. Gill was having difficulty deciding between a gratin of summer berries and spiced caramel pears with cocoa sorbet, when our very charming waiter (an expatriate Kerryman) suggested a half portion of each. That was a hard-to-resist offer, so that's what we had. Two good puddings finished a good meal. This sort of quality for £73.80 makes West Waterford a destination that foodies should put on their map.