Three o'clock came and went without any sign of impatience to hurry us away.Still, as Marina was keen to point out, "that's Brighton for you; the restaurants are so child-friendly here!" Her dessert of pan-fried caramelised pineapple served the dual purpose of gluing her mouth shut and putting a smile on her face. Of my own pudding, all that needs to be said is that cr? caramel is not a natural pairing with rhubarb, in the way that orange juice isn't a natural pairing with toothpaste.With a couple of glasses of wine and service, we paid around £70 – which, if Marina is to be believed, could practically buy you a nice studio flat overlooking the sea. Despite some inconsistencies in our meal, we left brimming over with warm feelings for Seven Dials. And best of all, this family-funded enterprise has opened in what used to be a branch of Burger King One down, a couple of hundred still to go ESeven Dials, 1 Buckingham Place, Brighton, (01273 885555).. If you said that we wrote our first book on a wing and a prayer, it would be an understatement." John McKenna is reminiscing about the first guide that he and his wife Sally ever wrote. The purchase of an ageing Renault 4, a love of travel, and Patricia Wells's Food Lover's Guide to Paris spurred on the then barrister and restaurant reviewer.

"I was a comprehensive failure at the Bar, and I was becoming more interested in food," he recalls. "We weren't sure at the time whether or not there already existed in Ireland anything like it – somewhere you could look up an area, drive down a road and find a funky cheese-maker at the bottom. You can really tap into a country's culture through its food." If you said that we wrote our first book on a wing and a prayer, it would be an understatement." John McKenna is reminiscing about the first guide that he and his wife Sally ever wrote. Sponsored by the Bridgestone tyre company, but published by the couple's own Estragon Press from their west Cork home, their 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland, 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland, Irish Food Guide and Dublin Food Guide, were joined last autumn by the food lover's Shopper's Guide and Traveller's Guide to Ireland.

Anyone with an interest in food and eating out in Ireland should travel with at least one of the six.These influential and respected food critics continually scour the lanes, roads, farms and shops of Ireland for gastronomic experiences. "The gathering of information is completely scientific," McKenna laughs "It's all gossip. If they abolished gossip tomorrow, the Bridgestone guides would die." The discoveries such gossip leads to – shops, markets, restaurants, caf? cheese-makers, butchers, grocers, bakers and growers – are written up in laid-back and familiar style; the recommendations read like advice given to a friend. While you may not agree with everything that they say about the restaurants or hotels, no other guides can match theirs for attention to detail, up-to-the-minute information and enthusiasm.McKenna, now a lively-looking fortysomething, has monitored as closely as anyone the renaissance of artisan food- production in Ireland. "When we first started out, some of the cheese-makers had been making Irish farmhouse cheese for over 25 years, and in many respects, very little has changed. The fundamental difference between now and when we began writing our books is that artisan producers in Ireland have moved from the periphery to the mainstream."The currently burgeoning Irish economy has helped.

"People in Ireland, have more money these days, they travel more widely and are more discerning.What I like about the way people enjoy good food in Ireland is that it's not just a status thing. You can't sustain an artisan food culture without a discerning general public, and producers are now deeply appreciated.Over the past 10 years, all these circumstances came together in a magical way and we can now really talk about the idea of a food culture and about quality. Take the case of the people who make the farmhouse cheese Cashel Blue, who have gone from producing five tonnes a year to 50 tonnes, such is the current demand. It's production on a larger scale, but it is still very much an artisan product."The Irish government's shifting agricultural policy and introduction of the REPS (Rural Environmental Protection Scheme) has produced changes for the better, too. More and more farmers are joining the initiative to lower use of pesticides and insecticides. "The days of the intensification of Irish agriculture, which was the modus operandi of the Sixties and Seventies, is gone, and I'm optimistic for the future," McKenna says. Large-scale production led to some terrible abuses in Irish agriculture.