Telephone: 01242 604566
Address: 5 North Street, Winchcombe, Glos.
Rating:17/20

We were discussing the poor quality of service of a local butcher when our heavily pregnant waitress said, "Oh, my husband is related to him." As her husband was busy preparing our lunch in the kitchen, I put aside the uncharitable comments that I was about to deliver. You can't hold the qualities of a chap's relations against him, particularly if he is a local fellow, and a chef of considerable talent.

I had first come across the chef, Marcus Ashenford, when he was cooking at Le Chavignol in Chipping Norton. It had been very good, and pretty pricey, if memory serves, and I had marked him down then as a cook to watch. Now here he was, if not quite on my doorstep, within easy striking range of it at 5 North Street, Winchcombe. Winchcombe is a winsome place. Its streets have the haphazard charm of a bag of mixed sweets. The town seems to have been spared the homogenisation of the modern retail development. It may well have a Marks & Spencer, a Boots, a Dolcis and a Superdrug, but I didn't see them. I did see a butcher, a baker, a greengrocer, and an independent wine merchant, and you don't often come across them in the high streets of our country towns these days.

Ashenford's 5 North Street fits into this milieu precisely. It is a small, heavily beamed place, with large, dark, highly polished tables, and salmon/russet walls. It is charming, friendly and cosy - cottagey, if you like - a perfect local restaurant for a husband and wife (and a soon-to-be baby). But if the dining rooms have a cosy familiarity, the cooking is pretty ambitious. It attempts to bring together some of the earthier elements of traditional British cooking - welsh rarebit, bubble and squeak, mushy peas, oxtail, braised cabbage, mashed swede - with the more sophisticated ingredients and techniques of French haute cuisine: chicken ballotine, brill braised in red wine, nougatine parfait. Attempts and succeeds, I should add.

We ate, the Financial Controller, Myrtle, and I, honey-glazed belly of pork with mushy peas, caramelised apples, crisp sage leaves and a sauce of apple and hazelnut; deep-fried skate beignets, buttered spinach, aubergine purée, red pepper coulis and rocket; pigeon breast with foie gras, bubble and squeak, and onion confit; braised shoulder of lamb with carrots and cabbage and garlic mash; confit leg of duck with grain mustard mash, caramelised apple and grenadine sauce; nougatine parfait and fennel sorbet; and salt butter caramel with vanilla ice cream. You may have worked out that this does not add up to a fair division of dishes - Myrtle is a one-course luncher, and made do with the substantial shoulder.

The dishes were markedly simpler than those I remember from Le Chavignol, less given to embellishment and all that fancy stuff you get when there is an army of willing helpers in the kitchen. However, simplicity did not lead to a diminution in effectiveness, excellence and all-round edibility. Let's take the pigeon dish by way of example. The breast of a wild pigeon can be a fairly intractable chunk of protein, especially if you try to cook it beyond a pretty basic sanguineous state. Ashenford got around these problems by slicing the breast into thinnish sections and popping a generous slice of hot foie gras on top, the rich juices of which provided slick lubrication. The musky flavour of pigeon melded perfectly with the vegetal bubble and squeak, but the really smart idea was to put a spoonful of sweet onion confit on top of the whole business. It provided a blithe counterpoint to all those earthy, hedonistic flavours.

There were many other equal pleasures: the skate, perhaps more croquette than beignet, was given a polish and a starring role this underused fish deserves; the combination of belly pork and mushy peas is little short of paradisiacal for those who love comfort in the tum; the salt butter caramel is another old idea resurrected with relish, polished and potent as a pudding; an unsweet, uncloying nougatine parfait paired with a delicate fennel sorbet was cunning and clever. These are the dishes of a chef who thinks, who has a point of view, and who knows how to give pleasure - and such qualities run through the entire menu.

There wasn't a duff dish in the whole lunch. Not all of them bore the marks of high inspiration, but all had been intelligently considered and cooked with care. Since the Ashenfords had only just opened their doors, this was a considerable achievement. I got the feeling that things will get even more stimulating when they've had time to settle.

All in all, this was a meal of rare pleasure. And of rare value, too - £75.80. Admittedly, Myrtle had only the one course, but we had a bottle of terrific St Chinian off a smartly designed, reasonably priced list, which cost £17.60. Add another fiver for water, and we get food costs of £53.20. Offhand, I can't think of anywhere in London, or any other mega-metropolis, come to that, where you can eat so well and so cheaply.

· Open Lunch, Wed-Sun, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, Tues-Sat, 7-9.30pm. Menu: Lunch, £15.50 for two courses; £19.50 for three; dinner, £24.50 for two courses, £29.50