Set menu or à la carte? At Oxford’s Loch Fyne restaurant this is really a no-brainer. The set menu represents such stonkingly good value that I am fearful of setting off a stampede in Walton Street by telling you about it.

On offer are two courses for £9.95 and three courses for £11.95. On offer, what is more, for most of the time. The deal is not limited, as in some other restaurants, to times when no sensible person wants to eat — before 7pm, say, on a Monday or Tuesday night. You can tuck in, at least at present, any time from Sunday to Thursday and on Friday and Saturdays up till 6pm.

There is nothing in any way niggardly about the dishes on offer, either. On our test meal last week — when naturally I was on the carte — Rosemarie devoured a brimming bowl of cullen skink (that delicious classic Scottish chowder made with smoked haddock) and followed up with a whacking great grilled plaice.

Her pudding of chocolate fondant (first-class) was actually taken from the main menu, though she would have been perfectly happy with the set’s baked apple pie, if this hadn’t been advertised with a 15-minute wait, which would have delayed our walk home on this taxiless (because wet, because Halloween) night. At least we would have found out whether the dish was, as suspected, a pie made with baked apples, the assumption being that any apple pie would always be baked.

Other dishes she might have chosen from included starters of potted smoked mackerel and whiting fillets in tempura batter and main courses of mussels, smoked salmon fish cakes, taglioline provencale, and grilled goat’s cheese and porcini mushrooms risotto. Oh, and a side order is thrown in too. Rosemarie had twice-cooked chips.

The restaurant was rapidly filling up when we arrived, so we were glad that we had a reserved table down in the main dining area where crustacea and fish are temptingly laid out on ice at one end for customer’s inspection. We assumed the crowds were made up of people like us — refugees from Trick or Treating, too old to know the rules of engagement of this imported Halloween nuisance. In fact the lights had just come up in the next door Phoenix Picture House after a sell-out screening of Skyfall.

Taking our cue from the tastes of its hero, I suppose we should have ordered a vodka martini. Instead, we both went for gin and tonic. Impressed to find a range of more unusual varieties, I selected a Whitley Neill and Rosemarie ordered Sipsmith. In both cases, I regret to say, we interfered with the complexities of the botanicals with slices of lime. I nibbled an assortment of pitted olives as we made our menu choices, noting the various offerings (including scallops and oysters) from the Scottish loch that lends its name to the chain. Within minutes our dishes were delivered by waitress Manon who, during later discussion, we discovered was from Lyon.

My starter was very substantial and very good, Called Loch Fyne Smoked Ashet, it consisted of a wooden platter bearing two chunks each of salmon smoked in three different ways: conventional smoked salmon with a caper dressing, Kinglas fillet in sashimi style with soy and wasabi dressings and kiln-roasted Bradan Rost. All were delicious.

Rosemarie was very happy with her soup, though surprised that it did not appear to have been made, as is usual, with creamy milk. The plaice that followed, was beautifully cooked and so large she was able to offer me a good-sized piece of it.

My main course was one of the day’s specials — a generous piece of grilled halibut, cooked just a shade longer than it should have been, on a bed of very creamy mashed potatoes with a buttery sauce containing lots of juicy crayfish tails. I had a side order of samphire, which was fine, except for a few chewy, twiglike bits in it. We drank the house white wine, a Sicilian blend of Grillo and Chardonnay grapes.