The last thing anyone running a restaurant in rural Ireland needs is a snarky critic riding in on her high horse and looking down her nose at the food. So here’s the unwritten code of conduct: Find somewhere you love? Write about it. Get a joyless plate of mediocrity? Quietly pass on and leave them in peace.

So what if both things happen? You get good food in a nice setting with friendly service but there are a couple of dishes so odd that you wonder if they came out of the same kitchen.

We’re in a packed car climbing the hill out of the Rosslare ferry port and getting what is the first glimpse of Ireland for many visitors. The search for a parking space on Wexford’s quays almost breaks our resolve to eat here. It feels like a town that is shrugging us off: Drive on, nothing to see here. After a heart-thumping reversal down a one-way street, the parking gods grant what feels like the last space on the planet.

It’s a relief to ditch the car and we’re rewarded with cheerful small streets. Greenacres is an impressive sight, a handsome redbrick Victorian building with a tall glass box built onto one end. The ground floor restaurant is roomy with tables and leather chairs arranged on a parquet floor, and the big windows let in plenty of light. It’s hard-working building housing a restaurant, bakery, wine shop, deli and gallery.

We chose a seat outside on grey wicker chairs with a glass-topped wicker table. The menu sounds a lot more promising than some touristy places we encountered in France the previous week.

Good things first. There’s a great duck and sweet potato cake, thready chunks of nut-brown meat in a savoury sweet duet with the orange sweet potato with a sherry and soy glaze. One of our boys gets a a striploin steak with lots of smokey taste seared into the outside but still tender inside. Less successful is a rubbery pink Toulouse sausage on another plate. But they’re offered with pasta and potatoes and vegetables along with the inevitable chips.

The duck is one of four small plates we’ve ordered to take a tapas-y approach to lunch. I get a skewer of lamb meatballs which are fine with dried mint-flecked yoghurt. The cous cous is carrot-orange for no discernible reason. It just tastes like cous cous. There’s a dish of grilled chestnut mushrooms with blue cheese. They’re packed into a ferociously hot cast iron pan sitting in liquid. This is watery rather than oily and garlicky, suggesting it’s the water the mushrooms have released in the cooking.

The “what were they thinking of?” moment is a plate of white toasted bread with what looks like melted cheese on top. It’s a jolt to discover it’s soft, cold apple sauce. It’s described as “apple chutney” on the menu but is stewed apple. On toast. This might work for breakfast with the toast as eggy French toast with lots of cinnamon and maple. Here it’s not so much fusion as confusion.

Then there’s the chicken liver and orange pate which is served in a glass jar the size of a small salt shaker, a portion so minuscule for €8.95 that it solves a perennial problem with pate in restaurants. “Normally you run out of toasts, but here you run out of pate before you’re finished the toast,” my husband remarks. It comes, like two of the other plates, with unimpressive, soggy salad.

We don’t have the heart for dessert and head for the road to nibble on French chocolate instead.

Greenacres is an enigma. Heart and thought has gone into designing a lovely building and an interesting menu. But when the most satisfying moment of a lunch experience is finding a parking space, you have to wonder where it’s all gone slightly wrong.

Lunch for five with lemonade and sparkling water came to €65.15.

The verdict: 5/10. Some good food overshadowed by the oddness of some dishes. Greenacres Restaurant, Selskar, Wexford, tel: 053-912 2975

Facilities: Small and basic

Music: None outside. Jazz inside

Food provenance: Scant. Wexford namechecked for the mussels

Vegetarian options: Good

Wheelchair access: Yes