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My bone marrow with parsley salad (£8) was uncannily similar to Fergus Henderson's famous dish from St John restaurant: a meaty marrow-bone with toast, plus parsley and caper salad. It wasn't as good as Henderson's: the salad was slightly too oily to cut the marrow's richness. So instead, I cut the richness by drinking deeply of a pleasing Rioja Reserva Bodegas Navajas 2005 (£35).

I preferred my main course of grilled fillet of bream (£15). The fish was flakily fresh and came with new potatoes that actually tasted of potato, with a refreshing rocket pesto, red-pepper sauce and roasted tomatoes. The flavours were sweetly comforting. It was like something out of Delia's Summer Collection, as was my husband's rump of lamb (£18) with lamb jus and spring vegetables, including courgettes cut into neat rhombi and tiny charred spears of the last British asparagus. Lamb is harder to get right than beef – overcooked can be dull, undercooked is worse – but this was just so: slices of pinkly tender meat.

The room was taking on a happy buzz, particularly from the tables that had ordered the doughnuts, which came piled high in silvery buckets. We had panna cotta and tarte tatin (both £6). The tatin was muscovado-dark, with a well-judged scoop of cinnamon ice cream. The panna cotta – with balsamic strawberries and a shortbread biscuit – wobbled nicely, though I had my doubts about flavouring it with black pepper (pepper and strawberries, yes, but pepper and custard?).

Nothing we ate was cutting-edge or very original. There were no foams or futuristic gels. But The Hole in the Wall passed the crucial test of any restaurant, which is whether you'd go back. Already, we are planning a return trip. MasterChef uses food to make us tense. But The Hole in the Wall does something better: it leaves you relaxed.

WALLS TREAT...

The Walls Welsh Walls, Oswestry, Shropshire (01691 670970)

This former school was saved from dereliction 20 years ago; now the handsome stone building (still with vaulted ceilings and original fireplaces) is home to an elegant restaurant where baked chicken comes with chorizo and a creamy spinach sauce (£16)

Tea on the Wall 5 City Walls, Chester (01244 342938)

A welcome pit stop along Chester's historic two-mile city wall, this Grade II listed building deals in sandwiches, salads and generous afternoon teas (from £11.95) served with a pot of loose-leaf Earl Grey from the Tregothnan estate in Cornwall.

Greywalls Muirfield, Gullane, East Lothian (01620 842144)

Albert Roux is behind the menu at this golf-lovers' hotel so it's no surprise that his famous twice-baked soufflé has a starring role (£8.50). Try the Loch Duart salmon with lettuce emulsion and samphire (£17.50) before a stroll in the Edwardian garden.