The service is impeccable, the light just right and the music is thankfully muted. I've just eaten the most perfectly cooked piece of halibut with an exemplary hollandaise sauce and drunk a well-chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

There is a pleasant buzz about the room and it's full of a good cross-section of people. My wife has had a similarly impressive meal and we are now walking home. Welcome to the perfect suburban restaurant.

Ten years ago if you wanted a decent plate of food there was little option but to head into town. It would have been a rare occasion, a bit of a treat, so nobody would have minded.

As for the driving, well, it wasn't an issue - you drank and then drove home. You'd have paid big money and dined out on the experience for weeks.

Now we want to eat out all the time, spend too much time travelling anyway and are certainly more responsible about drinking and driving. We like our neighbourhood, it's why we live there and we've probably paid a fair whack for our house.

Let's face it, the city centre can seem like a bit too much of an effort and we are not alone. Restaurant openings outside of the city centre are somewhat notable of late. In the last five years we have seen the opening of restaurants like Cavistons in Glasthule, The Gables, Bray, Nosh, Dalkey, the Forty Foot, Dún Laoghaire and Dali, Blackrock in south county Dublin and the likes of Cruzzo, Malahide and Aqua, Howth, in north county Dublin. Why have these operators chosen to stay out of the city centre?

The reasons are varied but lower operating costs, access to staff, marginally lower rents and a captive audience are chief among them.

But too many are masquerading as top-flight establishments instead of something accessible. How many of us complain about the cost of eating out in this country and reel when we do a comparison with pretty much anywhere in Europe?

Much is made of how the structure of the industry there is different - family-run, family-owned property with no rent to pay, but that is not all there is to the equation.

In New York at the end of last year it was noticeable how great value restaurants exist in neighbourhoods throughout the city and the same is true of London, where pubs are being gastro'd at a phenomenal rate - chefs going their own route and buying leases on downtrodden boozers.

Part of the problem is due to size. If you can only seat 50 people you have to charge them a certain amount to make any money.

This is further compounded when customers then only go during the latter part of the week, squeezing what are already a limited number of people into even fewer days and leading to necessarily higher prices.

Good suburban restaurants - and there are too few - need to offer great food in great surroundings and encourage customers to come back repeatedly for different occasions.

The term brasserie may make us think of great Paris institutions like La Coupole, but isn't that precisely what we all want?

Something that isn't trying to pretend it is grand when it isn't, somewhere where you feel comfortable as well as being special and most importantly, somewhere where you can choose to spend a lot or a little depending on whether it is Tuesday or Friday, an anniversary or just one of those nights when you do not feel like cooking.

It is easy to blame restaurateurs for not providing what we all say we want, good food at realistic prices, but there is also an onus on us. Go into any Italian trattoria on a Tuesday night and it is likely to be full of families having a quiet and quick dinner; pizzas and salad, more water than wine and a stroll home through the warm evening air. Maybe it's the climate we are missing out on. Eating out in Ireland is undoubtedly more expensive than other countries in Europe, but what we get is different. Rents for a start are high, as are staff costs.

The food is often more elaborate and tends to cross and interpret several different cuisines. Time is a large factor and while on holiday we are happy to have another glass of wine and relax, here we demand attention.

And finally restaurants in this country are out to make money while many European restaurants are family run, with lower property costs and viewed more as a way of life than a means to richness. We get what we pay for in other words - but do we really want it?