Telephone: 01245-348077
Address: King's Head Walk, Chelmsford, Essex
Open: Lunch, Wed-Sun, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, all week, 6-10.30pm
Rating: 14.5/20

The inhabitants of Chelmsford seem a remarkably convivial lot. "Ah, yes," said Tucker, when I put the point to him a day or two later, "Essex people do like to party." Just so. Of course, it may have been the effect of chowing cheek by jowl on the lower deck of Muddy Waters that brought out the cheery chatter in them. Whatever the reason, there was no denying that the evening sitting in a two-storey barge moored to the bank of the River Can, among the retail parks and business centres around the edge of the town, was going with a zing.

I had been drawn to Muddy Waters partly by its name - I have an abiding respect for the great blues man - but more especially by an entry in the Michelin Guide that gave it a good food at moderate prices grading. There aren't so many places in Essex that qualify for either of those descriptions that the scrupulous critic can afford to ignore one of them. Sadly the scrupulous critic went alone, having been abandoned by the usual crowd of companion tasters. Even Tucker found some other engagement.

Actually, I have no misgivings about eating on my own. From time to time, it's quite restful. The only serious drawback is that one person can't explore the menu with the thoroughness that professional curiosity demands without either attracting unwanted attention or simply bursting. Still, I could watch what others were having and extrapolate from my own dishes.

These were, in order, mussel soup; roast pigeon breast with mash; rhubarb and ginger crème brûlée. How plain they look on paper. How plain they were on the plate. Mussel soup: large soup plate of creamy, browny liquid, not unlike the water in the river outside mixed with cream. Pigeon breast and mash: a large pat of mash surrounded by a glossy, dark gravy and with two glossy dark breasts. Admittedly, the crème brûlée was decorated with a twee, unseasonal sprig of redcurrants and a sliced strawberry, but like a restorer stumbling across a masterpiece hidden beneath the overpainted accretions of lesser artists, I found true beauty underneath. All right, that's a bit of a flight of fancy, but you know what I mean.

Plainness does not necessarily mean a dish is boring or poor, and in this case the plainness was a cover for really rumbustious flavours. I confess that I peered at my mussel soup with some misgiving when it was brought to me by one of two cheerful and energetic waitresses, not least because there wasn't a mussel in sight and it did not cry eat me. It certainly did not cry eat me in the way that my tastebuds cried, "More" after the first mouthful. It had a knock-your-socks-off concentration of mussel flavour surfing in on the crest of the cream. It was a soup to make me reach for the bread to wipe clean every vestige from the plate.

The pigeon and mash had the same qualities. It wasn't the silky mash that is more sauce than purée that you get in senior restaurants. You could tell that this mash had been made with potatoes and bulked up with heart-easing quantities of cream and butter, which it needed to stand comparison with a rich and rolling gravy and the beautifully cooked - ie, not bloody and raw - squab pigeon's breasts. They had to be squab. No wild pigeon could possibly have that tenderness.

And beneath the fruity froufrou of the pudding was a perfect crème brûlée. The caramel top was crisp, the custard underneath of absolutely perfect texture, rhubarb and ginger just cutting the richness of each mouthful (and this from a man who does not normally countenance mucking about with one of the world's great puddings).

That is not to say that the food aboard Muddy Waters is without its flaws. The bread wasn't great. The croutons with the soup appeared to have been fried in old oil. Vegetables with the main course came as a waterlogged "selection", a custom that I thought had been banned by law. And then, of course, there were the distracting fruits on the crème brûlée. But these were only minor flaws. The principal dishes were handsome and rollicking. As I ate, I watched go by a gorgonzola and mascarpone tart with red onion confit and a stir-fried Thai beef salad with oriental orange dressing, a seafood thermidor and a roast best end of English lamb with creamed leeks, and thought that I would get the same pleasure from these. Certainly Chelmsfordians of all ages and stations were doing so.

So, yes, the quality was good, and the price of £24.25 for the food was distinctly on the moderate side these days, especially for cooking as generous, in every sense of the word, as this.