La Vina, Wallingford

12:20pm Thursday 24th January 2008

I began 2008 eating in a hotel fashioned from a former prison - the Malmaison, of course - and have since enjoyed meals at other restaurants that used to be something else. They include a former garage (Brown's), a bank (Quod), a church (Bicester's Old Chapel, reviewed last week) and a school (the new Spice Valley in Gloucester Green - comment coming soon).

To this list can now be added Wallingford's La Vina - you'll have to make do without the squiggle over the 'n' as I don't know how to supply one. This was formerly the town's main post office, an imposing building looking over the market square. Actually, it was also formerly a Forno Vivo, another branch of catering giant Laurel, specialising in Italian food. Presumably, this did not prove successful.

The company's original aim - I learn from a clearly well-informed posting on the internet - had been for one of its Slug and Lettuce joints (Oxford has one in George Street, aka Vomit Alley). Local opposition sent Laurel down the restaurant route but some suspect that its ambition still remains a busy bar.

Certainly, La Vina appears to be packing in the customers at present - happy family groups in the main when Rosemarie and I lunched there last Saturday. All around us were youngsters - finery in place, faces painted. They were off to the panto, and fuelling up for two hours of audience participation with a jolly good scoff.

Their happiness proved infectious and helped to take our minds of the inadequacy of some of the food that was being set before us. 'Inadequacy' is the mot juste, encompassing both quality and quantity - simply put, there was not very much of it.

On the one visit I have made to Spain, I enjoyed Lucullan feasts at every meal. My impression that it's a country of trencherpersons has been reinforced at the many happy meals I have enjoyed at La Tasca, another chain operation, which has a well-run branch in Oxford's Castle development. Portions there veer towards the generous, and I naturally found myself drawing odious comparisons with those at La Vina. I mustn't suggest they were uniformly measly. The bowl of black and green olives, for instance, with which I started my meal, was enormous. There would have been plenty for both of us, even if Rosemarie could have been tempted to overcome her lifelong aversion to them.

The same was true of the meatballs with garlic olive oil and tomato sauce. Unfortunately, these were not good to eat. Though described as home-made, they had a distinct air of having been mass-produced on the cheap - bland-tasting, packed with cereal and looking, in their cylindrical shape, as if they had been extruded from a machine rather than shaped by hand.

The "chicken in garlic and white wine", as the menu described it, was also in reasonable quantity. The trouble for me was that the sauce was mainly cream (unmentioned in the description), which I am not supposed to eat.

The fishy things I ordered were good but ungenerous - half a dozen or so marinated anchovies arranged in clock-face design to make them look more plentiful, a couple of small pieces of monkfish baked in ham, and a handful of whitebait with garlic mayonnaise (I had far more, for instance, on my New Year's Day lunch at the Fishes in North Hinksey, and they cost less than half the price).

Both of our veggie things were likewise good but small - sautéed white and green beans, and a well-dressed salad of fresh grated fennel, watercress and pine nuts.

Three things about the visit were much enjoyed - the warm and courteous treatment from the staff, and especially our waiter Alex, a fine fruit salad of strawberries and apples, and an absolutely delicious wine - light and lovely Homenaje Blanco, Navarra.

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