If you can bear having Christmas merchandise thrust in your face aplenty, particularly at this time of year when it shouldn't even be a glimmer in your conscience, then you might enjoy a lite bite or so at Stephen H Smith's garden centre in Harden.

Where there used to be indoor plants and shrubs is now an airy cafe-cum-restaurant with a varied menu to choose from, whether you want a quick cup of coffee, an afternoon tea, or a full-blooded lunch.

Four of us were a little bit peckish early on Sunday afternoon, so we grabbed a table in the fairly full eating area, and studied the menu and specials board above the counter before joining the queue to place our order.

I had my heart set on the home-made soup of the day, but alas they had run out moments before, and I had to plunge straight into my main course choice - the gammon, egg and chips from the specials board.

My wife Liz picked another item from the board, the minted lamb chops with vegetables and a baked potato, while our daughter and our friend decided to try two of the filled baked potato varieties, one with just cheese, the other with baked beans and cheese.

We had to check that the baked spuds were done in the oven and not microwaved for our friend, which indeed they were, and when they arrived in good time, were both deemed to be very tasty, if a little bit pricey.

My gammon, eggs and chips was really quite good, very home-cooked like, with real chips, and a thick juicy helping of gammon.

Liz thoroughly enjoyed her lamb chops, and the baked potato, although the vegetables that came with it were a little on the cool side, and a bit disappointing.

The desserts were disappointing, too, a bought-in cheesecake that failed to live up to its promise for our friend, and a toffee bakewell which was also deemed just so-so by Liz. On the other hand, our daughter went for a cone of the dairy-fresh ice cream which looked - and apparently was - very pleasant.

I stuck to having another mug of the excellent coffee, preferring to savour the taste of the pleasantly filling gammon and eggs, and trying to decide whether the £25 we had spent on the food, plus a couple of cokes and coffees as well, had been reasonable value for money.

In the end, for about £6 a head, I concluded it had.

Doug Akroyd

and certainly much improved on the previous version of the coffee bar - now given over to an annex of Santa's grotto.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.