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Eager to celebrate Rosemarie's birthday in style, we chose the place in Oxford where style comes in bucketloads. Quod, at the Old Bank Hotel in High Street, has become such a part of city life over the past eight years or so that I wonder how we ever managed without it. Its success arises from the combination of its perfect position - the view from its windows is one to die for - its tasteful, cool interior, its eclectic, well-chosen menu and wine list, and the cheery bustle created by its eager, youthful staff.

I am a big fan. When it was opened by catering entrepreneur Jeremy Mogford a few weeks short of the Millennium, I enjoyed it so much on my first evening visit that I returned for lunch the next day. There have been many similar bursts of enthusiasm in the years since. Lately, it has been on a real high, with the broadening out of a menu that had seemed for a time to be slightly thin (but I wish they would bring back the hake!). In the past few weeks, I have eaten three meals there, all faultlessly served.

As a prelude to the birthday dinner, we drank cocktails further along the High at another triumph of tasteful design, Clinton Pugh's Grand Café. (In olden days, one supposes, there was much traffic in the opposite direction between these establishments, with people withdrawing money from Barclays Old Bank to spend down the street in what was then Frank Cooper's Marmalade shop.) There was an expertly made Margarita for me, a Mojito for Rosemarie and a Raspberry Cosmopolitan for her mother, Olive. A second? I confess there was. All were half price - under £4 - as cocktails are in the evening here. Excellent value.

Over our glasses, the gilded interior was looking its best, the café flocked with Oxford's jeunesse dorée off to a college ball. Much use was being made of the many huge mirrors for preening, pouting and (since these were the chaps) adjusting of strange-to-the-neck bow ties. They were a happy, good-natured lot; I hope they enjoyed themselves later as much as we did.

At Quod, we were pleased to find ourselves pointed in the direction of a favourite table. Tucked just inside the door, it commanded a fine view of the bustle within the restaurant and a vista, through an adjacent window of the beauties - and the buses - of the High.

Our focus of attention first, however, was the menu - though the birthday girl's choice of main course had been settled even before we sat down. I knew as soon as I saw it on the specials board that she would not resist 'Rofford' cottage pie, produced using beef reared on Jeremy Mogford's Oxfordshire farm. (The steaks from the same source had already sold out.) She elected to start with "hand-picked Jersey crab" - the description relating to its preparation rather than selection (though it could, of course, apply to both). She loved its fresh, refined taste - all white meat, and lots of it, offset by light lemon mayonnaise and watercress. Californian Vaquero chardonnay, lively and unoaked, was the ideal accompaniment.

I started with a starter-size portion of the wild mushroom risotto, well-textured (that is, not sloppy) with a heady flavour of the woods, and continued with another of my Quod favourites, seared fillet of sea trout. Firmer, less fatty and more subtly favoured than salmon, the fish was served moist beneath crisped skin, with a generous portion of minted pea purée. I added dauphinoise potatoes and green beans (somewhat over-peppered).

Olive, who began with chicken liver terrine and red onion confit, continued with a slow-roasted shank of lamb, cleverly teamed with vegetable caponata, an Italian dish similar to ratatouille featuring tomatoes, onions and aubergines. The meat was exceptionally good and one wondered whether it, too, came from Mr Mogford's Rofford farm. Probably not, since the menu had not said so. Rosemarie's cottage pie, I am pleased to say, was first-class, featuring lean, flavoursome meat in a rich tomatoey sauce and topped with smooth mashed potato.

She shared a fine sticky toffee pudding with her mum to finish, while I enjoyed a fruit salad consisting principally of melon, apples and paw-paw.

A cab hailed in the High delivered us swiftly to Osney's Holly Bush pub where a series of expertly performed jazz classics from the Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band brought Rosemarie's birthday to a jolly conclusion.

3:05pm Wednesday 14th May 2008

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