From the outside, La Vista, on Sutton's Strand Road, looks much like any standard, old-style shop and newsagent. Inside, it looks even more conventional: papers sitting on a low shelf, a counter with ices, an assortment of household stuff. Nothing unusual.
Except, then, that you notice that the TV set in the corner is playing an Italian station, and that the deli counter at the end seems to have some interesting things, and in front of it there is a silver milk pail. What's in that?
The answer is a very fine extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil, produced 50 kilometres from Rome on the estate of Stefano Crescenzi's family. Mr Crescenzi, who runs the shop with his wife, Eileen, bought La Vista a year ago, and they are slowly introducing a small assortment of the foods of Mr Crescenzi's native Italy to the northside. As well as the olive oil - which is soft and lush with good fruit, and excellent value at £10 a bottle - they sell some fine cheeses, including a northern Italian Grana Trentino, matured for a year, which is a super eating cheese, and very good quality Villani cured meats: mortadella, bresaola, coppa, salami, and so on.
What is also interesting is the small range of wines, in particular the delicious litre bottles of Teroldego. These are real Italian artisan products, not the chi-chi boutique stuff sold at inflated prices in slick delis, and the Crescnzis are valuable not just for selling these good things, but for selling them in what is a wholly appropriate context. So, this morning, do pick up some Parma and some extra virgin when you pick up your Irish Times.
La Vista, 25 Strand Road, Sutton, tel: (01) 832 2391 Open 7.30 a.m.-9p.m.