Pipe & Glass Inn, South Dalton, East Yorkshire (01430 810 246). Meal for two, including wine and service, £110

I am minded to feel sorry for the Pipe & Glass, near Beverley in East Yorkshire – a nice, unpretentious country pub serving quality food with inspired touches. It is not merely that they had to feed me on a rainy winter's night, poor sods. It is also that they have just won a Michelin star, which should be a cause for celebration – and doubtless was – but which can also be a curse. I went there because the tyre company had just bestowed the award, and it took me a whole weekend to conclude that any doubts I might harbour about the place were nothing to do with the pub – which is nice, unpretentious, inspired, etc – and everything to do with my relationship with the bloody guide.

God, I should have learned better by now. I should set up some system involving nipple clamps, Tasers and the mains electricity supply connected to the book's covers to wean me off my Michelin habit, but it's been with me a very long time. It's no accident that I do this job. I've been a restaurant trainspotter for decades, and even though I know that Michelin is wretchedly flawed – horribly Francophilic, absurdly focused on the kind of service which in Soho back streets comes with a high price tag, inconsistent and scattergun – I still pay attention. I think I know what one Michelin star means, which, in a way, is their triumph. Consumers like me think we own the brand. But we don't, and too often it can get in the way of seeing clearly the restaurants we eat in.

All this is my way of confessing that had I gone to the Pipe & Glass without there being a star in place I would have instantly thought it terrific, but because of that star I was measuring it against an irrelevant scale. It is just a pub, with a real public bar, and soup on the menu – a minced mutton and pearl barley broth with dumplings – at £3.95. There is an open fire. Music pumps, and out the back is a conservatory extension which, with its plush carpets and modern windows, is verging on the suburban. The food, while knowingly pubby in places – prawn cocktail, fish pie – can also be developed and intricate. For example, a tartar of salmon came with a tiny "scotch egg" of smoked salmon, with a centre of quail's egg whose yolk still ran. Crisp rissoles of wild rabbit were partnered with cockles, capers and sorrel, and while on the menu it caused a raised eyebrow, on the plate it didn't. Queenie scallops, the size of my fingertips – I have big hands – came on the half shell with a cheese and herb crust, and on the side a pickled chicory salad. All of these could have done with a bolder hand on the seasoning – let a cockle speak as a cockle – but there was no doubting the quality of the cookery.

Or the keenness of the pricing. It was a fair slab of sirloin, rare within, crusted without, for £17.95, and that's before you consider the salad of lightly jellied salt beef on the side, or the chips. The same is true of the huge, double-limbed Barnsley chop, with its crisp fat and glossy exterior, the devilled kidneys, the cast-iron pot of boulangerie potatoes baked long enough so that they had become crusted to the metalwork. Oh, and the bowl of crunchy, pickled red cabbage. There were no fierce culinary fireworks here, but there was lots of technique and a real instinct to feed.

At dessert, a tasting plate of chocolate things – a shot glass of milk chocolate mousse with cream, a dense sauce-sodden chocolate cake, a crisp-shelled ganache cone, plus a crème brûlée to ease the load – forced us to make strange guttural noises. As did the smooth lemon posset with crisp, clovey "East Yorkshire Sugar Cakes" made to a 200-year-old recipe dug up from the archives of nearby Beverley Town Council in 2007. I am a total sucker for that sort of thing.

There is a separate vegetarian menu, some smart ideas for kids – I love the sound of ham and pea risotto – and a wine list packed full of serious bargains. Staff were cheery, and there was no silliness about the service. The Pipe & Glass is a class act, and I hope very much that the awarding of the star brings it serious custom. What I hope it doesn't bring is battalions of fork-wielding, napkin-sniffing, dish-photographing Michelin pervs. Basically, I'm hoping they don't have to put up with any more people like me.
jay.rayner@observer.co.uk