TradeNames: A prominent Italian restaurant has stayed the course with a recipe of fresh food properly prepared. Rose Doyle reports

Nicos is the last of the first Italian restaurants in Dublin. Intimately acquainted with the dining habits of the great and the good, it's been an intimate witness, too, to the seismic changes in its particular part of town - and more than lived to tell the tale.

"Nicos is part of Dublin, and that's it," Graziano Romeri speaks without fear of contradiction. His partner and co-owner, Emilio Cirillo, is equally certain of their place in the scheme of things. "We're one of the oldest Italian restaurants in Ireland," he says.

There's no doubting its pedigree: Italian is the working language in Nicos ("otherwise we would forget it", says Graziano), the staff are Italian and Irish, the mood cheerfully Latinate, and the espresso I'm given unmistakably the best Italian.

Nicos has been at 53 Dame Street for 41 years, since Ruggero Nico left his job as a butler in the Italian Embassy and started what was a family restaurant. Born in Vicenza, which is between Verona and Venice, he ran his restaurant for 10 good years before going back to Italy to take over a leather business with his brother.

"He had a great name in Dublin," Emilio Cirillo says. "He was a big handsome Italian who was known by everyone. They all came here in those years - professors from TCD, politicians like Charlie Haughey and Brian Lenihan." "And the opera people," Graziano interjects, "the operas in those days had many more Italians in the Gaiety season than now. Even the director was Italian. They all came here during the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s. That's how Pavorotti got his break, you know, when he came to sing in Dublin in the 1960s."

Ruggero Nico returned to Italy in 1973, and Emilio Cirillo and Graziano Romeri took over the restaurant (which has always been known as Nicos) in 1977. In the years between the restaurant had a couple of different owners; Emilio Cirillo explains how he and Graziano Romeri became its proprietors.

"We were working together in Bernardos," he says. "I was a chef, Graziano was a waiter. When Nicos came up for rent we took a chance and started our own business. We've been here since then and have no regrets whatsoever."

His partner agrees, then adds: "We're here since November 21st, 1977. We took over the day after the big freeze up . . . I remember it well. But in those days we were young and didn't care about such things."

We talk about other things; like the great changes in Dublin since then, about how and when Irish attitudes to Italian food came of age.

"Change began with car-parking and the drink driving rules," says Graziano. "Until then our customers came from Howth, Bray - everywhere outside the city. With the new Temple Bar, things changed completely. It brought a great buzz and cleaned up a lot of old buildings but it also," he hesitates, slow to criticise, then says what has to be said, "it brought an overflow of drunkenness to the streets around here that our customers didn't like. Many of our customers still come, of course, and we have a newer generation of younger customers."

Graziano recalls a night when Noel Purcell, "your man with the white hair" played the piano and sang in the restaurant. "The piano is part of the Nico tradition, here since Nico himself. Noel Purcell would have been in his 80s when he sang here; all of the customers began to sing along with him."

Emilio insists Dublin is "the best city in Europe. It has the best restaurants, the best anything you want." Graziano debates this, Emilio recalls some of the "good old days" to which Graziano, philosophically, says, "that was when you could leave the door open in the morning, come back in the evening and nothing would have been touched. Now you need three locks and they still break in."

But this is not just a Dublin phenomenon, and we all know it.

Starting up, in 1977, was a "bit hard" Emilio concedes. "But fair-dos to a good few Bernardos customers who came to support us. Michael Mullan, the trade unionist, was one. After a few years things started to really fly for us. We have always looked after our customers. Italian customers would come to us for christenings and first holy communions. May was the best month; we'd have one or two of these every Sunday at that time of year."

The Italian community in Dublin is a close-knit one, the great majority having roots in Ciociaria, which is in Lazio, just south of Rome. The owners of Nicos restaurant are exceptions to the rule. Graziano Romeri grew up north of Milan, met his Irish wife while working in Switzerland and came to Dublin in 1969 when she got him a job here. Emilio Cirillo was born outside Naples, though his family have been living closer to Rome since 1971. He met his Irish wife in London - "and she brought me here in 1971!"

So, after all these years, do they feel Italian or Irish? "Mostly Italian," says Emilio, promptly. "What sort of question is that?," Graziano asks, just as readily.

And so, at last, we come to the question of Italian food and the Irish.

"Playing against Italy in the World Cup in 1990 was what did it," Graziano says. "People came back with a different attitude to Italian food; they'd figured out there was more to it than spaghetti and pizza. Playing against Italy was one of the best things that ever happened to Ireland! Before that everyone speaking English in Italy was thought to be English - now Italians know the Irish and appreciate them."

Nicos' proprietors agree their food priorities and Graziano puts it into words. "The proper food we used to serve years ago still goes on the tables," he says. "It is cooked fresh, no plastic, pre-prepared food here. We're big into veal, and different fish cooked in different ways - not just the usual cod and scampi. We have four or five specials each season - at the moment it's venison steak and pheasant with our own special sauce."

Emilio puts Nicos enduring popularity down to the fact that theirs is a hands-on operation. "The only way to have a good restaurant is to do the work yourself," he says. Graziano agrees. "You have to choose between the life of a manager-type owner in a suit or being here all the time. We've been here, together, since 1977 and that's the way it will go on."