The zoo? The Garda pound for towed cars? You'd need a drink after any of them.

Ryan's is a landmark pub, famous for being a wellpreserved Victorian bar.

It's a tightly-run place with young old-school barmen who deliver drink promptly and efficiently with a clipped friendliness that has enough of an undertone to let you know that while you are here, there will be no messing.

FXB's as a partner restaurant seems like a good idea, a steak restaurant being suitable both for drinkers and tourists, while holding on to the notion of tradition . . . two old Dublin stalwarts coming together. You can order from the menu and eat in the bar but we went to the restaurant upstairs, a snug space decorated in a modern style that leaves the Victorian age behind.

Starters are all under a tenner, mains under 20, apart from the steaks, which bounce up into the mid-thirties, depending on how long and how hard you want to chew. It's quite a male world, I think, the steakhouse menu, with its statistical combination of cuts and numbers, bigger of course being better. Should I chance the 24-ounce option because, though I may not actually eat it, value-wise it makes sense?

There is a tidiness and efficiency about the menu here that's quite enjoyable.

No adjectives. A starter of Dublin Bay prawns was written up as coming with "garlic oil, salt bread".

That's all. More an inventory than a description. An accurate one as it turned out. Six prawns, garlicky buttery oil, toasted bread. Very good. It happily fulfilled the role of a starter in a meal where the main event would be at least partially assessed by weight . . . a small burst of intense flavour that wouldn't take up valuable real estate.

Salmon and haddock fish cakes were just as short on description but in reality were closer to potato croquettes, the fish being in very short supply. While 8 seems like okay value for a fish cake, it's not so hot for a side order of potato. A badly mixed batch maybe.

A 10-ounce fillet steak was cooked as ordered, meltingly tender and nicely seared. Dry-aged rib-eye had plenty of flavour and was more delicate than one might expect. Normally with rib-eye, what you gain in taste you pay for in texture and fattiness but this, possibly through the process of dry-aging, was more intense and no work at all.

Side orders of crispy fried onions, hand-cut fat chips and mushrooms were all very good, as was a mixed salad with shaved parmesan. Broccoli was hotel-grade stuff.

Peppercorn sauce tasted mostly of white pepper, not black or pink or green, which was just strange, while bearnaise had none of the sharp zingy tanginess that it should have and no discernible flavour of tarragon. It was a pity that the quality of the meat wasn't backed up by the sauces. We were, predictably, floored by the main courses and had coffee to finish.

We drank a bottle of one of the house whites, a fresh, grassy French Sauvignon Blanc and, on the recommendation of our server, a Spanish red from Navarrre, which was all oak and vanilla and very suitable company for grilled meat. The service was good, relaxed and helpful.

The simplicity of what FXB's are doing is to be admired. They have access to good raw materials that don't require much in the way of embellishment and they've tried to keep the whole operation as straightforward as possible . . . exactly the right kind of thing for a pub restaurant.

The few wobbles in cooking that we experienced weren't enough to really upset anybody, more minor irritations that would be easy to put right. If they were you could be very enthusiastic about this operation.