I came across predictable online whingeing from the real ale brigade over the restyling of the Bird in Hand at Sonning Common as a gastropub.

Don’t the dimwits of Camra realise that the availability of top-class food is the surest way for a pub to survive these days? Good beer isn’t going to do the trick when everybody is swilling this at knock-down prices at outlets of JD Wetherspoon, with which Camra is so bizarrely hugger-mugger.

Wetherspoon is as much a friend to the struggling landlords of Britain as Tesco is to the small trader. It is instructive to note an offer mentioned in the autumn 2008 edition of SoxonAle (Camra’s South Oxfordshire newsletter). I quote: “In a new promotion in conjunction with JD Wetherspoon, all new and renewing Camra members are receiving £20 worth of vouchers to be used at Wetherspoon pubs and Lloyds No 1 Bars [the chain’s yoof-angled brand] over the next year.” The same issue carried the “bad news” of the Bird in Hand’s closure.

Anyway, the Bird in Hand didn’t stay shut. Experienced caterer Roger Cox and partner Kay Thomas took it over, refurbished and reopened (tempting fate!) on April 1 last year. Since then, beer buffs have been well catered for, with products of the nearby Lodden Brewery on handpump, as well as other real ales (Doom Bar and Abbot Ale when we visited). A wide and appealing menu has also been attracting lots of foodies.

None of this would have been apparent last Wednesday, though, when Rosemarie and I dined alone in the restaurant as one other customer supped his pint at the bar. This was hardly unexpected by me, in fact. As I joked to Kay at the end of the evening, identity revealed: “Who but a restaurant critic goes out — has to go out — on a foggy mid-week night five days into a new year?”

Quiet as it was, though, our dinner proved to be most enjoyable, with Kay an affable and attentive host and chef Felipe Olivera (covering for an otherwise-occupied Roger) doing fine work in the kitchen.

With every table in the restaurant to choose from we sensibly picked one, on this cold night, next to a radiator. Orders made, our food was delivered with welcome speed.

First up for me were garlic mushrooms — lots of whole button mushrooms cooked with chunks of garlic in a creamy sauce — most of which (conscious of my expanding waistline) I left. The dish came with a well-dressed salad and toast.

Rosemarie enjoyed a bowl of potato and leek soup, as it was described, but which also contained not unwelcome quantities of parsnip too. She continued with the evening blackboard special of lasagne. This was in the approved (by her) solid rather than sloppy form but of a somewhat meagre dimension, perhaps no more than a square 4in x 4in. Good job that it came with chips and salad — and that we were supplied with plenty of fresh bread (crusty baguette).

My main course did not look very appetising, being a couple of sea bass fillets smothered beneath a spicy tomato sauce containing a couple of large peeled prawns and lots of smaller ones. The sauce, I felt, would have been better served beside the fish. But the dish certainly tasted very good.

I decided against ordering the evening’s vegetables, an unsuitable-for-fish assortment of roast parsnips, carrots and red onion. But they came anyway, though their £3 cost, I note as I write, was not on the bill.

Best came last, for me, with a superb selection of five cheeses (in very generous quantity) from around the British Isles. Tops, I thought, was Baron Pouget’s pungent Oxford Isis, though I loved both the Black Bomber Welsh cheddar and the mega-smooth Scottish Caboc which was just like eating a lump of fine butter, or possibly clotted cream, wrapped in oats. Wreathed in smiles, meanwhile, Rosemarie tucked into a slice of caramel apple pie with ice cream.