They say that the restaurant experience can be influenced by your mood when you arrive. Well, consider this. Our evening was preceded by quite the ride. We were happily sitting in our taxi until it hit a bus, just a scrape, but enough for the driver of the bus to start blowing its horn madly and have our driver jump out of the taxi to yell back at him. No gardaí were summoned, so we were still going to make our booking. Our taxi, one of those van-based cars with sliding doors, let us out on South Great George’s Street in Dublin 2 and as my beloved pulled across the stiff door, the window burst out of the frame, smashing into smithereens on the street. A now more agitated taxi driver sprang from the car and hurled a collection of abuse at us for smashing the glass, just as the bus he had earlier hit pulled up alongside, turning the affair into a two-front war. Passersby checked we were okay and we headed away from the scene – which was not of our making – just in time to arrive for our restaurant booking and, just to inject more drama, watch gardaí wrestle to the ground and handcuff a tourist who had clearly been doing 12 pubs on repeat, possibly since Christmas.Would you be well?This is not how you want diners to arrive, but, with our trauma carefully compartmentalised, a series of Italian waiters in the newly opened La Vespa in Castle Market charmed us beyond any lessons provided in Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, and a carafe of water and bottle of Vermentino (€38) continued the good work.La Vespa is directly opposite La Maison and is exactly what you might come up with if you decided, ooh, let’s do the same thing again, but this time in Italiano. Which is perfectly logical, since Giorgio Urbani is the operator o both restaurants.Here, it’s an all-Italian crew. Paolo Orlando, the head chef, is originally from Corleone in Sicily and spent years working across Sicily, Piedmont and Veneto, before moving to Ireland where he cooked in The Unicorn, Peploe’s and Nanetti’s in Dublin and Rinuccini in Kilkenny. For him, it’s all about sticking to the regional Italian classics, while Sardinian chef, Eliana Marteddu, makes the fresh pasta. The menu covers cicchetti (snacks), starters, mains and desserts, with the usual Italian crowd-pleasers – arancini, burrata and bresaola – but it’s the fritto misto (€16) that has caught my eye because it lists calamari and Dublin Bay prawns as the seafood in the mix. My scepticism fades quickly when the gloriously battered prawns on my plate are indeed the Dublin Bay variety, not something you see often, while the rings of squid are tender inside the crunchy coating.Handmade beef and mortadella cappelletti (€15) are served in a chicken broth of such intensity, it tastes like the chicken was roasted before it was made. The filling works well, the taste of the mortadella coming through in a neatly made pasta with firm edges, perhaps from a little too much time on the counter.Arancini at La Vespa. Photograph: Bryan Meade