One magnetic gastropub

A few weeks ago, Britain's critics were divided into the classy, that wouldn't, and the media whores, that would make an appearance on Hell's Kitchen. Obviously, I did it. One of the celebs, James, the amusing gay man, asked me what a gastropub was. I could feel a teenage-style, eyeball rolling, 'Duh! Gaaaaawd, don't you know!' coming on. The adult in me prevailed and I said, 'It's a pub that serves decent food.' That is categorically my last definition of the bloody word.

Gastropublicans get very particular about the semantics. Barnaby Meredith at The House in Islington, for example, gets huffy when you call his place a gastropub. 'It annoys me,' he says, 'because it is a pub dining room'.

People love to say of The Wells, 'it's not really a pub, it's a smart restaurant, isn't it?' It has a reputation for being rather pricey yet, equally, for serving fantastic French food. Head chef Andy Gale, ex of Chez Bruce, keeps high standards for perfectly balanced simple dishes. But it is unquestionably a gastropub. They pull pints of reasonable real ale, and sausage and mash, fish cakes and burgers appear on the downstairs bar menu.

Since Beth Coventry - who set up the Prince Bonaparte and was the chef at Langan's back in the day when it was the most happening joint in town - bought out her partner in The Wells a couple of months ago, prices behind the bar have dropped. You can get a pint for under three quid now. She plans to make the aesthetically stark upstairs dining rooms more cosy, but the food remains on the simple edges of fine dining. On a sunny bank holiday the small-ish outside areas were rammed with merry pint-drainers.

I chose a cheap-ish English wine off the pricey-for-a-pub wine list. Prada Elaine wrinkled her nose at its sweet, elderflowery qualities. I liked it - a perky, light, lunchtime sort of a drink, all it needed was to be much colder. We asked, repeatedly, for ice and it never came.

The only real complaint we had was that the staff were stretched to the point of hair-tearing hysteria. A table of eight who had travelled up here from far parts of London (always the mark of a fine gastropub) said they had had an excellent lunch, but that the service was chaotic.

Prada Elaine's chilled pea soup with crispy Parma ham was notably green and 'bursting with summer and that super flavour of garden peas'. Pompous Surfer liked his smoked haddock with creamed leeks, cucumber and silver onions - a pale-looking dish but with good seasonal character - sufficiently that he wanted to mop his plate with bread, which was a struggle to obtain. I had a salad of ham hock, sauce gribiche and crostini: perky little punches of red basil and other herby leaves, crunchy slivers of pungent oil-drizzled bread, salty ham and crunchy pancetta, all lightly covered in the gribiche, a rich and spiky mix of mayo, egg, mild capers and herbs. It was a casual-looking dish, but the mix of ingredients was spot on and, like Elaine and her pea soup, it made me happy.

Calves' liver came with fondant potato, pancetta and asparagus. It was pale pink, firm and more substantial than your average moussey baby cow's milk-fed organ. Elaine adored her plaice, which was 'delicate, milky, creamy and perfectly cooked'. My roast bream had crispy skin and firm, delicate flesh.

The mash was a smooth and creamy puree.

We looked admiringly at the impeccable, mainly French, cheeseboard being wheeled around, but instead worked our way through the puddings. Pannacotta with the slightest whiff of earl grey tea was a good combination, the malt beer ice cream that came with the chocolate brownie elicited rounds of billing and cooing.

For the three of us the bill came to exactly £100 including service which, for food of this standard, was incredible. The Wells is producing great food for a gastropub, and Gale has a fine way of capturing the essence of the season on a plate. For once, Pompous and Prada were delighted to be my friends.