The dining room at the Crown was empty that particular lunchtime. The petrol blockades were at their height, which didn't help, and then there was the position of the Crown itself, tucked away in one of the clefts that seam the steep, heavily wooded sides of the Wye valley, south-west of Monmouth.

You have to work at getting to the Crown, and so, if you're a bit doubtful about the petrol supplies, you could be tempted to give this lunchtime's beanfeast a miss on the grounds that you might make it there, but you might not make it back again.

Not that to have to stay over would be a disaster, because the Crown advertises itself as a restaurant with rooms, a pleasantly old-fashioned and rather French notion. It suggests that the emphasis is on the food rather than the frills and furbelows of modern hoteliery, and while I like my bedtime comforts as well as the next sleeper, I like the comforts of the table even more. Anyway, I don't suppose that the Crown was too disturbed by not being overrun one lunchtime in a while. When you have survived 30 or so years in such a position, you must be used to every vicissitude in the trade.

This length of service gives the Crown a certain gravitas, a calm certainty about what it is up to. The beamed dining room, for example, is pleasant and proper, neither cloddishly rustic or oppressively smart. The basics of tablecloths, napkins, glasses all have the weight and heft of fine quality, but the service has a fresh and personable charm. I might be the only person in the place, but I didn't feel like a sad solitary. Lunch trickled by in an agreeable fashion, my reading of the day's paper broken by the intermittent arrival of courses.

Mark Turton, the Crown's chef, is a graduate of the Roux brothers' school of culinary excellence. The Roux brothers were - indeed, still are - sticklers for the basics. Their cooking is founded on the classics principles of la cuisine Française: sauces are based on stocks; meat is served pink; vegetables play second (if not third or fourth) fiddle to the big protein number; pastry is an art form. The dishes have a certain - what shall we say? - weight to them: handsome Victorian mahogany rather than lightweight bleached pine Ikea. You do not look to the Roux brothers, or to their disciples, for novelty or fantasy.

But then, novelty or fantasy would not suit the Crown one little bit. So I had three courses of highly satisfying, mostly beautifully prepared food from a menu that generously offered two courses for £12.95 and three for £15.95. The three courses were a ravioli of leek and St David's cheese in a wild mushroom risotto with a beurre blanc sauce; noisette of lamb with spinach pancakes and walnut jus; and savarin soaked in strawberry syrup with a warm fruit compote.

Now, there's nothing startling about that lot. You could argue that a chap eating on his own could not explore the full majesty of the menu, and, of course, you'd be right. But it isn't my intention to explore the full majesty of any menu, but to replicate, as far as is possible, the experience of anyone walking in off the hills. Anyway, when you've been eating 200 or so restaurant meals a year for 10 years, you know what a chef's cooking is like from the way he lays out a menu. Don't ask me why, but you just do.

The first course was disarmingly rich, a very French interpretation of Italian cooking, making use of local ingredients. The ravioli was a fine piece of pasta, cooked to teasingly soft perfection, the leek dominating the cheese. I rather doubt that the rice in the risotto was the traditional arborio, but it was generously larded with diced wild mushrooms, which tasted as if they might, indeed, have grown underneath a tree rather than a polytunnel. And the beurre blanc was a model of that sauce, gently astringent and silky with butter.

The lamb dish continued this level of cheerful indulgence. The lamb was local, and carried plenty of colour in terms of flavour. It needed all of that to stand up to an almost intimidating sauce based on a red-wine reduction given further clout by chopped walnuts. The half-bottle of warming Gigondas to which I limited myself had the measure of the dish perfectly. The pancakes suffered a little in this taste blitzkrieg, but had their part to play. I wasn't convinced that a side issue of six further vegetables - namely, red cabbage, gratin dauphinois, carrots, courgette and celeriac batons in a filo basket, and French beans - really did, even though they were adequately cooked. It was the kind of supernumerary dish demanded by local clientele rather than by the kitchen.

But the savarin was a serious disappointment. The strawberry syrup had reduced the delicate sponge to a soggy wodge, made soggier still by the warm fruit compote. Perhaps I should have had the chocolate and caramel pannacotta with dark chocolate sorbet recommended by my cheerful waitress.

The bill was £30.65. The food had chipped in at the advertised £15.95. The Gigondas contributed £11.50, and water, coffee, etc, accounted for the rest. You can't quibble with the food costs. They are pretty reasonable, given the craftsmanship of the kitchen and the quiet quality of the place - even for the solitary luncher.