The Old Chapel, Bicester

To the dismay of some of its former members - as disapproving of idle pastimes as of alcohol - the building was transformed into a snooker club. I visited a few times - not to play at the tables but to battle with the club's brainboxes in the Oxford Mail quiz league. They were always very welcoming, I remember. Nearly three decades on, the property has seen change again with its refashioning into a 76-seat restaurant and bar which opened in November.

The project is the brainchild of Charlotte Parry and Martin Eldridge, partners in a local building firm. They spent £150,000 with the aim of creating the stylish restaurant they and others recognised was needed in the town. They spent well, and have provided just that, with important input from Charlotte's dad Richard, an experienced caterer who is in charge front-of-house, and a clearly talented chef Adam Abbott. The quartet are pictured above.

On a first visit eight days ago, Rosemarie and I found much to admire in terms of decor, service and - most important - the food. The menu is not large - indeed, perhaps not quite large enough - but dishes look good, with flavours up-front and the freshness of the ingredients apparent. Portions are generous; Bicester is a place, one senses, where any tendency to meanness would instantly create resentment. The loaded plates, moreover, arrive with commendable despatch from the kitchen; one suspects that this, too, is as the locals would expect.

We began our visit with drinks - a Bombay Sapphire g and t for Rosemarie; mineral water for me, the driver - in the 'chill-out' area in the corner of the restaurant. Our selections made from the menu, it was not long before we were called across to our candlelit table.

Wine was already there - including the glass of Rioja I had ordered to drink with my main course. This was promptly returned to the bar when I spoke of the likelihood of its being knocked over (the table was not large) before this stage of the meal was reached.

I began with two ravioli filled with butternut squash and served with more of the squash in roast cubes, garlic cloves baked in their skins and olive oil. There was no obvious sign of the crispy sage mentioned on the menu. The dish was much enjoyed, though one of the parcels had been constructed from pasta rather thicker - and therefore rather chewier - than the other.

Main courses extended little further than chicken, sea bass with mussels, mushroom risotto and various steaks. Rosemarie fancied none of them, and therefore asked to have two starters. She began with a big bowl of succulent steamed mussels in white wine, shallots and cream. She said they were the best she'd had in ages. Bubble and squeak with black pudding and two perfectly poached eggs went down well, too. Rosemarie marvelled at its size, wondering what on earth she might have received had she taken up the waitress's offer to have a main course portion. All that spoilt the dish was a slightly unpleasant taste to the oil - too old? overheated? - in which the bubble and squeak had been cooked.

This same oil, it would seem, had been used to cook the small pastry disc that featured (but fortunately only tangentially) in her pudding. The rest was a deliciously gooey chocolate fondant on a home-made biscuit base (not a "tart" as the menu said since the two had clearly only been connected as they were placed on the plate with an accompanying dollop of chocolate mint ice cream).

The kitchen's reluctance to assemble the constituent parts of a dish in the way expected was apparent, too, in my main course - The Old Chapel "Tournedos Rossini". The inverted commas and 'The Old Chapel' were perhaps intended to convey that this was not the dish that its creator Gioacchino Rossini would have recognised - a circle of fried bread, bearing a fillet steak topped with cooked foie gras and slices of truffle ("the Mozart of mushrooms," as the great composer called them).

Instead, there was a truly excellent chunk of pink-centred steak on one side of the plate, with strips of mushroom, wilted spinach and a rich port-based sauce containing smoked bacon lardons, while on the other was a crouton topped with cold chicken liver parfait.

Regular readers of this column will realise that the meat constituents of this dish ought to be forbidden fruit for one such as I on a low-cholesterol diet. The disjunction between them did at least mean, however, that I was more easily able to ration my intake of the much naughtier parfait. I can't pretend, though, that there was much left at the end.