Address: Mulberry Tree, Lancashire
There used to be a very useful section in, I think, the old Egon Ronay Guide (it may have even been a complete guide to itself) devoted to good-value eateries within 10 minutes or so of any motorway. Given the total failure of service-station catering facilities to produce stuff (the word food is too precise to use in this context) that is anything other than utterly disgusting and outrageously priced, the need for such a guide remains as imperative as ever. But would we make use of it?

There's something about driving along motorways that saps the intelligence and drains away all energy. It took a colossal effort of will to turn off the M6 at exit 27, turn right at the first roundabout, continue for another three miles, keeping an eye peeled for the sign of the Mulberry Tree. Should you do so, too, however, you will find the minimal effort amply rewarded - with the emphasis both on the amplitude as well as on the reward.

There is something so instantly, utterly, distinctively Lancastrian about the whole enterprise. It breathes a jolly generosity mixed with confident commercial instinct. Refined it is not. Designer-driven it is not. A little bit brash it may be. But warm, and well-run, well-priced and well-aimed it undoubtedly is. The large ground-floor area is sort of open-plan, with cream-and-white walls, fake beams, the odd strip of anaglypta and mulberry-tree motif carpet. During the week, it has a bar menu, with proper dishes as well as sandwiches ranging from £3.50 to £8.95, and on Sunday it does the full lunch and dinner effort, with one course for £9, two for £12 and three for £15. I don't suppose that I have to tell you that I had three courses.

One of the reasons that I was keen to give the Mulberry Tree a go was the fact that it is the latest port of call of Mark Prescott, who once graced the kitchens of Le Gavroche, and then took the White Hart at Nayland, Suffolk, to culinary heights as one of the early gastro-pubs. He is a cook with pedigree and gravitas, who has opted for the relaxed and informal cheer of the pub over the demands of fine dining. Aside from that, he is a Lancastrian to boot.

I must admit that I find the combination of classically-trained skills applied to the simpler, more immediate demands of pub food tremendously appealing. It is interesting how many of our best and brightest chefs are finding the rewards of upgrading the standards of pub food preferable to hacking it in the torture chambers that are aiming for the stars. The general eating public is the beneficiary of this culinary vision.

The Sunday menu at the Mulberry Tree runs through a good many standards of modern cookery. There are Thai fishcakes and chicken-liver parfaits, confits of duck and rib-eye steaks. More interestingly, there was a white-onion soup with tarragon cream, a breast of chicken tikka massala, steak-and-kidney pudding, and a boneless saddle of lamb stuffed with spinach.

Dining alone, and scarcely recovered from lunch with some too, too hospitable friends, I made one of my rare sallies into the world of soups, but followed this up with slow-roasted belly-pork with spiced apple from the day's specials, and settled down to nougat glacé with raspberry coulis at the end. This is where the superior skills pay off in the pub context. The white-onion soup was faultless, smooth as velvet, delicate and mild, with a froth of tarragon cream pointing up the haunting sweetness of white onion. The belly-pork had been slow-roasted to unctuous, fibrous softness (which, unfortunately, extended to the crackling). The apple, lodged as a layer under the crackling, was suitably tart and breathily spicy. The potent, mahogany-brown gravy and mixed veg gave the whole plate a bit of the Sunday-lunch-at-home feel, and there was no need for seconds. The nougat glacé was marvellously nutty, if a little sweet for my taste.

There is tolerable beer, but I was drawn to a bottle of one of the nouvelle vague Viogniers at an undemonstrative £14.50 (I drank only two glasses - some readers take a kindly interest in my health, not to mention my postprandial driving abilities) from a very interesting and amiably-priced list. My notes at the time summarised the Mulberry Tree as follows: "You can eat lots for little. Tasty, too. A good place; and only 5 mins from the Mway." On reflection, that's just about bang on.