Telephone: 01873 881101.

Address: Nant-y-derry, Monmouthshire

Rating: 16.5/20

It was a dark and stormy night, it really was - rain lashing down, wind whipping through the trees, blizzards of falling leaves - and there we were, the chief executive (aka my wife), daughter, cousin and I, groping our way through the back lanes of Monmouthshire in search of Nant-y-derry and the Foxhunter. The virtues of the Foxhunter have been extolled by a whole range of readers, invariably with the postscript that it was "well worth searching out", as if finding it were some kind of gastronomic treasure hunt. I hoped that it would be, because I had a carload of tired and hungry punters who would not hesitate to let me know if they did not think the meal at the end of the journey was worthwhile. And then, suddenly, there it was, shining brightly through the murk. "Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on" came to mind, and so we pushed on into warmth and civilisation.

I have some notion that the Foxhunter was once called the Foxhunter Inn. In its present incarnation, it has dropped the Inn from its name and all notion of what that means from its business plan. It is a restaurant pure and simple. The dining room was large and largely unadorned. The glasses and cutlery came from good backgrounds, but there were tablecloths. And no candles, as the chief executive pointed out in sub-acid tones. "I can hardly see what I am eating," she said, appropriating a large one from the windowsill.

The menu, and the prices, however, declare the Foxhunter to be a restaurant of some ambition. First courses from £5.95-£9.95 and main courses at £14.95-£17.95 would cause no comment in a city, but out in the rural heartlands they come as something of a wake-up call. It's not as if a country restaurant has the same rates/rental overheads as a city place. On the other hand, good-quality ingredients cost much the same wherever you are. All in all, I suppose you just rack up the critical apparatus a notch or two when you come across a place charging at the upper end of its bracket.

We managed a fair spread of dishes between us - roasted snails with garlic, shallots, parsley and almonds for the cousin; cauliflower soup with basil oil for the daughter; salt-cod fishcakes and aïoli for me; and pear, Roquefort and endive salad for the chief executive. Each was immaculate in all aspects of production. The dressing for the salad had just the right degree of mustard, the pear was perfect in its ripeness, the Roquefort balancing saltiness and creaminess. The salt-cod cakes were like crisp little rugby balls, the forthright flavours of the cod well disciplined, the aïoli humming with garlic. The gastropod gastrosoph gobbled up her snails, declaring them to be better than the last ones she had in France, and to my astonishment the daughter supped every scrap of her cauliflower soup, leaving scarcely a smear in the bowl.

Main courses: slow-roast lamb shank with sauté potatoes, garlic and rosemary; grilled skewer of swordfish with spiced Indian lentils; and two helpings of suckling pig with potato, cep and Gruyère cake. You can see from this lot that the Foxhunter's way to a customer's affections is broad and uninhibited. Big, rustic, generous flavours, clonking combinations - when the weather is less than cheery, it's the sort of stuff that gives you strength and comfort for the road home.

The lamb shank was mine, and it had been years since I had tucked into this once fashionable hunk of protein. It hadn't changed in essence. It looked almost intimidatingly gigantic, but melted away on closer inspection, the meat sweet, with plenty of tender goo to help it down. It came with a kind of mess of finely chopped savoy cabbage and root vegetables, as well as the advertised potatoes, which were light, delicate and well flavoured. The suckling pig showed similar deftness in combining meat and veg. The pig was tender as the night, and the potato, cep and Gruyère cake as broad beamed and fruity as a Beryl Cooke character. The swordfish with spiced-up lentils and yogurt was a quick-witted combination and, for once, the chunks of swordfish were not raw on the inside, but finely cooked.

We had puddings, too: toffee and banana tartlet with crème fraîche, which went the way of all sweet favourite things; a rich chocolate pot, which proved too rich for its intended victim; and soft vanilla, honey and nut parfait with cherries and ginger biscuit - I am not sure what the biscuit was doing there, but the rest was a nicely judged balance of mellow sweetness and punchy tartness.

So we come to the only contentious issue, the bill. This was £151.90, or £38.97 a head. Wine consumption was modest - one bottle at around the £25 mark - and there was also water and fizzy drinks. This kind of pricing makes the Foxhunter less of an oh-let's-just-pop-down-there-for-a-bite-to-eat kind of place, more the I'm-told-it's-very-good-and-we-should-try-it. In other words, you'd think before going. I wouldn't think too long, however. On dark and stormy nights, it hits the spot. And on warm and balmy ones, too, I dare say.

· Open: Tues-Sat, 12 noon-2.30pm; 7-10pm Menus: Lunch, £16.95 for two courses; £19.95 for three. Wheelchair access & WC.