Telephone: 01874 620111
Address: Felin Fach, Brecon, Powys
Rating: 16.5/20

Let's face it, gazpacho Andaluz with frozen olive oil and crushed avocado, or courgette flowers, smoked shrimp, pea puree and golden marjoram dressing, isn't your usual pub fare, even in this new age of the enlightened gastropub. But then, the FFG isn't your bog-standard wayside watering hole. It's a kind of dream inn; a very contemporary dream, I should say. There are tiled floors, big beams and wooden pillars; Granny's kitchen table, schoolroom chairs, well-worn leather sofas and armchairs; crack service from a team so young that I felt I ought to check their birth certificates; and clientele fresh from a shoot for the Boden catalogue - that is, well-to-do, well-heeled and in the process of getting well-oiled (but politely so).

You might expect this in the home counties, or Oxfordshire, perhaps, or even coastal Norfolk or Hampshire at the weekend, but Wales, just up the road from Brecon? Well, why not? We'll have none of those blinkered metropolitan prejudices in this column. There's been a growth market in rated eating places in the principality, yet it's still a bit like coming across an unmarked oasis, complete with the odours of fine cooking, in the middle of some particularly sere desert.

And the cooking smells were very enticing indeed. I went for conger eel with new potatoes, pickled onion and parsley mayonnaise, and then roasted wild pigeon, buttered spinach, honey-braised parsnips, creamed lentils with pancetta and trompettes mushrooms.

Neither conger eel nor wild pigeon gets much of an outing these days, and we are the poorer for it. Conger eel has a muscular richness and density that makes it superior to most monkfish. Unless it is completely raw, wild pigeon will always be on the resilient side, particularly when roasted, but you more than get your money's worth in terms of flavour, and that toughness is easily overcome by demanding a very sharp (ie, steak) knife. These alone suggested that the chef was thinking hard about using indigenous ingredients, even if he was using them in ways not dreamed of in the manual of the high priestess of Welsh cooking, Lady Llanover's Good Cookery.

Earthy though the ingredients might have been, their treatment and presentation were anything but. The conger came in three dainty fillets, speckled brown with the butter in which it had been roasted, placed at the centre of single slices of waxy new potato, laid out like petals around the plate, each adorned with a splodge of mayonnaise. The mayo was an ingenious touch, each downy blob carrying a refreshing dash of acidity to cut the richness of the fish. It was all well-considered, well-executed cooking.

Ditto the pigeon. Yes, it had that chewiness to which we are not used these days, when much of our food has a kind of semi-predigested softness, but it also had flavour - big, bouncing and husky - that went fabulously with the soothing richness of the properly creamy lentils, sharpened, unless I am much mistaken, with a healthy dollop of mustard. Again, the presentation was stylish: the pigeon, largely dismembered, was centred on the lentils, which were given shape by a ring of spinach and slivers of parsnips lying in a judiciously made clear stock sauce flecked with the mushrooms. Handsome, or what? As I said, these dishes were rather far removed from the unassuming manners of most gastropub food. Each dish was a statement of energy and ambition in the kitchen.

There was a slight falling of invention when it came to puddings. Anyway, I wanted cheese to help me round off the bottle of ChËteau Arnauld 1997, which I had been well advised to order - it was full, rich, with all sorts of layers of flavour for the tastebuds to sink through, and it made a very good senior partner to the five Welsh cheeses that came neatly ranged on a wooden board. Irritatingly, I forgot to make a note of their names, but they all had character, and were served in very good nick. I still couldn't finish the wine, so I passed the remains of my bottle to the couple at the next table, who were also tackling the cheese. They seemed very pleased.

The wine cost £27.50, and was worth every penny. Add to that a half of Tomos Watkin OSB, which might have been made to go with the eel, some water, and three courses for £25, and the bill was £56.40. OK, so that's not a cheap and cheerful price, but then neither is the cooking. It's serious and skilled enough to more than justify the expense. The panache of the place is a bonus.

· Open Tues-Sun, lunch, 12.30-2.30pm; dinner, 7-9.30pm. Menus: Lunch, £8.95 for one course, £14.45 for two; dinner, £19.50 for two courses, £25 for three. Wheelchair access & WC.