There's no sign to direct you and as far as Ordnance Survey are concerned, Mulberry Gardens doesn't exist. But this is the heartland of Dublin 4, just around the corner from the rugby ground, down the side of Kiely's, where vowels are tortured for fun on Saturday nights.

Ernie's restaurant operated here for over 20 years, producing nice expensive food for a nice expensive crowd. It wasn't the kind of place that you heard talked about much, but the people that needed to know, knew it was there and they knew where it was.

If you had to ask, well reallyf It was all very Dublin 4.

Jean-Michel Poulot was head chef of Halo at the Morrison Hotel and also at Peacock Alley, restaurants that certainly were talked about. Now he and his wife have set up their own place.

With a minimum of publicity, Poulot's has taken over the site where Ernie's used to be and is operating in a style that suggests that it's always been there, helped considerably by keeping the same front-ofhouse team. It was all so unexpectedly elegant and smooth and busy, the Lshaped room full on a Tuesday, that we began to wonder were we crashing somebody's party, slightly underdressed.

That feeling faded after we were given the menus and brought a drink. Oldschool service, quiet, confident, barely visible. We were distracted. There was a lot of reading in the menu.

One main course had 13 different ingredients listed.

This is a guy who is definitely doing his own thing, ignoring any suggestion that simplicity might be the way of the future, for a more imaginative engagement with the possibilities of cuisine.

The presentation is highbrow. Huge square plates.

Individual components live short glorious lives, sitting beautifully on their own waiting to be cut down, combined and eaten. Duck foie gras came on brioche with a fig compote and a balsamic reduction, all melting in a sweet rich stickiness that was balanced by the lightness of a sauce flavoured with quince, I think.

My companion had a rabbit risotto that was nothing like any he had had before. It was more than the sum of its parts and it had a lot of parts . . . the gamey tenderness of the meat, the nutty silkiness of the rice, the depth of the stock, the sweet freshness of the peas.

Just excellent cooking.

Loin of wild venison came medium-rare, two little cylinders of flavoursome tender rare meat served with a celeriac puree, pickled red cabbage, a tiny poached pear coated in crushed Szechuan pepper, discs of sweet potato, another reduction. There may have been more.

At some point I stopped thinking. It was brilliant, every mouthful revealing something new. Beef fillet came with black truffle mash, asparagus and a girolles sauce, a dark rich smokiness that matched the perfectly aged, perfectly cooked meat. With this, we drank a well-priced Corbieres by Domaine de Villemajou, taken from a mostly French list.

Creme brulee was straightforward, nicely done and served with very good pistachio ice cream.

Chocolate fondant was a gooey melting dark thing, not one bit straightforward, that came with pain d'epice ice cream. Coffee was excellent.

It seems like a strange location for a chef of Poulot's talent and ambition to locate himself, an area more noted for fat-cats than fashionable foodie types, if such a sub-group exists.

There's a sense that he's flying under the radar . . . try and find information about this place on the internet. I did and there's not much.

But despite location and no visible publicity they were full on a Tuesday, so maybe word has got out. Real flair in the kitchen, relaxed friendly efficiency on the floor. For food this good I would happily become fat. I might even, let it be said, consider becoming a cat.