Take her up to Pronto, Pronto, Pronto

Here's a blast from the past - the Pronto Grill in Ranelagh. If you haven't been by it in a while, go and take a look. Same neon sign outside with the picture of the chop and peas and glass of wine but a new matt grey facade and, inside, a big airy dining room with polished wood floor and handsome tables and chairs. The windows are folding doors that will be pushed back in summer so that customers can sit at the edge of the pavement.

Amazingly, the Pronto has been in business for 40 years, and, though it sounds Italian, it's not. It's Irish and has been run by the Kenny family all its life, but according to one local, they create such a friendly buzz that they might as well be Italian. It used to be a dimly lit place where you could get turkey and ham all day and chips and bread and butter with everything. The waitresses cooked as well as served, and Mr Kenny allowed to customers to run up a tab for their meals, and pay whenever they could afford to.

But father retired, son Shane took over and hey Pronto! The transformation happened just before Christmas so things are still settling down and old Pronto customers still wander in of an evening, then wander out again, thoroughly confused. Shane Kenny is still getting looks from some old regulars and one woman recently tore strips off him for taking shepherd's pie off the menu. However, not everything has changed.

The vintage sign survived, and so did some of the daytime waitresses, two of whom have served there for over 20 years. So, that's the background.

I hadn't been inside the Pronto since 1978 when I went there on my first date. For a while it was the place to go to after school because even at three in the afternoon it felt like midnight in there and they served frothy coffee that was almost cappuccino.

This time around I was meeting a girlfriend and because was a weekend night, and it's all so new, I expected it to be fairly empty. Not at all. Several tables were taken, almost all of them by women. The single male present - a middle- aged man wearing a club jumper - looked very uncomfortable sitting on his banquette surrounded by girlies.

The change seems to be working nicely and already the new Pronto has a very comfortable feel with people still breezing in and out for quick meals and a lot of chat and waving from table to table. Front of house and greeting people in a genuinely warm and friendly way is Ruth Mathers, a very friendly person who Ranelagh folk will know well since she managed nearby Dunville Place for two years.

In fact there is quite a feel of Dunville Place to the new Pronto, and the chef, Sean Hopes worked briefly there, as did a couple of the waitresses. There were several tables free but I was offered one in the window, with a good view of the room but beside a most appalling feature - a floor-to-ceiling mirror. A wide band of sandblasted glass in the windows saves you from staring directly into passers-by faces, although you can still make eye contact with the people on the top deck of the buses.

It's not real sand-blasted glass, just a sheet of "sand-blast effect" plastic stuck to the window. A clever architect's trick that you see everywhere now but totally convincing. At the next table but one were two women with a very well behaved baby who was dining in a high chair. This added to the general air if it being a civilised neighbourhood restaurant. He let out the odd ear-piercing yelp but it was nothing compared to the smoke alarm-like shriek emanating from a mobile phone on the table in front of us.

"Sorry, sorry," its owner would say grabbing it up after the third ring, as though she could barely hear it. She wasn't sorry enough to switch it off, though, and it kept going off until, mercifully, a man arrived and took her away into the night.

There were a few other mobiles chirruping away but they were part of the generally laid back feel. This seems to be a place that people can treat as an extension of their home. They can breeze in, have a quick bite, chat to people at other tables, even do a bit of work, then breeze out again. A great cafe, in other words.

Happily, there is nothing laid about the service. Drinks and bread came promptly; food took long enough for one to realise that it is freshly prepared. My friend wanted to do her bit as the critic's companion and insisted on ordering things that might be the test of a good restaurant, rather than the things she actually wanted to eat. I, on the other hand, just wanted some warm comfort food and there was plenty of that on offer. In fact it was the last night of the winter menu, and so the last chance to order some of the heavier French-inspired dishes such as beef daube. The summer menu, we were told, is going to be a lot lighter, and cheaper with more salads and pasta dishes.

Main courses range from around £8 for vegetarian to £12.50 for a full-blooded sirloin steak. My friend ordered seared loin of tuna to start - though neither of us were sure if tuna fish actually have loins - followed by the only vegetarian dish on offer, a sweet potato and tofu spring roll on a bed of Chinese greens. We both agreed that it didn't sound very appetising, but she was prepared to suffer for my art. "Strange that there's only on vegetarian main course in a restaurant in Ranelagh," she mused. "The place must be full of bean eaters."

I started with a terrific wild mushroom risotto that was richly flavoured and scattered with real wild mushrooms as opposed to the reconstituted dried ones that can be nasty and chewy. It was a comforting, unctuous dish that didn't need its moat of pesto oil, nor the parmesan biscuit that came on top of it. It was a generous portion for £4.75 and my friend tucked in too, having abandoned her seared tuna. It didn't look seared at all, really just a grey slice of fish covered in sesame seeds and quite raw inside. She ate the densely flavoured tomato and onion base, but left the fish pretty intact.

Ruth served us and commiserated on the tuna. It would be taken off the bill immediately, she said, then confessed that it was one of the less successful dishes that wasn't making it onto the new menu. We liked the honesty - too often these days if you complain that something is just not done properly the waiter bridles and says that that's how chef intended it to be.

Next came the spring roll, a long crisp one, sitting on a confused heap of stir-fried vegetables with a few miniature tomato halves acting as garnish. "Why do vegetarians always get whatever veg there is in the house chopped up and mixed together like this?" my friend wondered as she ploughed her way through it.

My liver and bacon was streets ahead, a really fine dish of thin slices of liver, topped by amazingly thin streaky bacon that tasted far better than anything from a pack, all sitting on a generous spoonful of fondant potatoes (that's a stage finer than mash) with more chopped bacon here and there. Beautifully cooked and served on a piping hot plate. The good news is that this is one of the most popular dishes and it's staying on the menu.

After that my friend reckoned that she deserved dessert but again, there was no pleasing her. Her nougatine glace was another complicated plateful, with an island of nougat ice cream surrounded by cherry sauce and a huge spun sugar thing that looked like a musical instrument. The nougat ice was not iced enough for her "Just like eating Haagan Daz that you've taken out of the freezer for a dinner party and forgotten about. This is what it's like the next day."

I got several scoops of good, but not home made ice-cream, and the same spun sugar accoutrement. We loved the relaxed atmosphere and I loved the food. The prices are coming down and while the menu will probably have to be tweaked a little few more times it's unlikely that the shepherd's pie will ever go back on the board. With a nicely chilled bottle of Australian Sacred Hill chardonnay, mineral water and good strong espressos, the bill came to a very reasonable £51.50.

Pronto Restaurant, 65 Ranelagh Village, Dublin 6. Tel: 01-4974174. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 6 p.m.1.30 p.m. Sun- day Closed Mondays