Dinner with the guru

Healthy meals with the best ingredients are a priority for guest critic Carole Caplin, Cherie Blair's lifestyle guru. But she found some treats on the menu still hard to resist.

Food is my alcohol. Despite the apparent contradiction with my day job, I relish my food and spend a lot of time encouraging people to enjoy what they eat as they improve or transform their health or weight issues. I am on an endless quest for good food with the best-quality ingredients treated simply and interestingly on the plate.

When eating out, I want flexibility - to be able to ask for slight changes to a dish, to have variety and taste. Also decent portions - I want to be able to have a few nibbles at my companion's meal without leaving them with less than a mouthful.

I was told that VILLANDRY was my first port of call and, coincidentally, I had booked a table the following Friday for a business lunch. Here I must declare an interest - the owner, Martha Greene, is a good friend of mine. We have known each other for years as I have regularly eaten there since it opened.

Martha and her business partners rescued Villandry in 1998 after it ran into financial trouble. She made several innovative additions to the restaurant and I fell in love with the no-smoking policy, breakfast bar, and twicedaily changing menu. Not to mention a takeaway deli, food shop, florist's, charcuterie and cheese section, where you can taste most of what's on offer.

Steve Evenett Watts (ex-River Café and Chez Bruce) is the head chef, working with his team in a unique way. Most kitchens have a chef in charge of each section - vegetables or meat, sauces or salads. Evenett Watts, however, feels that a chef should orchestrate the taste, look and feel of an entire meal. He oversees the restaurant, delicatessen and bar while a bakery team makes fresh bread, cakes and pastries daily on the premises for both Villandry and other London delis, restaurants and hotels.

Many's the time I have sat in the restaurant having little tastes of what is on offer, debating with Martha the perils of oversalting or drowning food with overuse of pepper, aubergines or too much sauce. On this particular lunch, it had been a while since I had tried the restaurant and I hadn't seen my eating companion, Simon, for years. To my relief, there was still that easy feel to the place and, best of all, Simon said he loved to share and taste - I have no table manners and usually delve into other people's food before they have barely seen their dish, let alone tasted it.

Having overdosed on red meat on holiday, I was craving vegetables, cheese and carbohydrates. For my starter, I had chilled fennel, courgette and cucumber soup. On their own, these vegetables are not among my favourites and I feared that the soup would taste of mushy peas. Far from it - the ingredients were blended with the right amount of a lemony seasoning, free from salt.

Simon chose grilled squid and scallops with chilli and rocket salad, which melted in the mouth - no overkill on the oil or chilli, the rocket was fresh and the amount just right. For my main course, I chose two other starters: marinated feta cheese, butternut squash, rocket and rosemary salad and a baby-vegetable salad with a honey-and-mustard dressing, plus a side dish of herb couscous for good measure.

As far as taste and texture go, the feta and butternut squash were what I was craving and the rosemary was a nice touch. But it's not the most attractivelooking dish and I wouldn't have bothered-with the rocket, which was a bit soggy. The couscous was transformed by adding finely chopped soft herbs served hot, and with all hidden ingredients cooked to perfection.