EATING OUT / Ambrosia with beetroots: Gravetye Manor

Gravetye Manor

Vowels Lane, East Grinstead RH19 4LJ, tel: 0342 810567.

Open daily. Set lunch Monday to Saturday pounds 22 per person (Sunday pounds 28), set dinner pounds 28.

Average price a la carte pounds 35- pounds 40. All cards except Diners and Amex accepted.

We really went there for the garden. My wife has hit gardening as other people hit the bottle, and is a dedicated fan of the late William Robinson - author of a book called The Wild Garden, which she kept out of the London Library for so long that she began to think it actually belonged to her.

, which is set in spectacularly beautiful countryside between Hayward's Heath and East Grinstead in Sussex, was William Robinson's final home. Each autumn he gave his gardeners orders to plant 10,000 daffodils, and even in extreme old age insisted on being pushed around the grounds in his wheelchair, scattering seeds from a bag in his lap. He died there in 1935.

The garden near the house remains wild and beautiful, with daisies scattered through the long grass under trees draped with rambling roses, and formal lawns framed by a chaos of shrubs and exotic thistles. The house was built in 1598, with creeper-covered stone walls, a broad Lutyens-esque tiled porch over the door into the garden, and charming odd touches like an old timber fire escape on one of the back walls.

Inside, clearly suffered a bit under Mr Robinson, with a lot of shiny late- Victorian panelling and marble fireplaces. The present owners, who have been running it as a restaurant and country club for nearly 40 years, have added a matching wing and put extractor fans in the leaded windows - at least in the small dining-room where we had supper.

As a restaurant and country club, attracts the sort of people you would expect to find at a restaurant and country club: the men wear suits, the women expensive dresses - spares hang on hangers in the back windows of their BMWs in the drive. There is a slightly corporate feel to the table manners, and much talk about Vodafones and Egon Ronay.

It being in the heart of Sussex, my own home county, there were also a few oddballs. The most interesting were a middle-aged couple who did not appear to be married or even having an affair, but who spent the evening in an intriguing review of their friends and relations. As we arrived, she was saying: 'I'm supposed to see him next May, but he doesn't seem very keen.'

The service was slightly impersonal - I think we may have looked rather out of place, though I had put a tie on for the occasion - but very efficient. We were offered drinks before we walked round the garden, and then shown in to dinner with a good deal of pomp - shiny silver covers whisked off dishes, and a waiter and waitress taking our plates away in unison with a flourish as soon as we had finished.

There was a set dinner for pounds 28, inclusive of service but exclusive of 17.5 per cent VAT, or a bigger menu where the lamb alone cost pounds 23. You are allowed to choose from both, and the set dinner was, perhaps coincidentally, a lot more interesting than the more extravagant choice. My wife was tempted by the pan-fried sausage of local rabbit, being a gardener and in favour of all local rabbits being turned into sausages, but ordered the smoked duck with caramelised orange and citrus jus, perfumed wih jasmin jus, which was part of the set dinner. I asked for something from the big menu, a chilled asparagus soup with croutons, tomatoes and chives.

Both were extremely good: the duck was laid out in strips like a starfish, and whatever they had done to the slice of orange it tasted wonderful. My soup, too, was real essence of asparagus: a Twenties decorator shade of green, creamy and very subtle.

Not being your wine correspondent, I chose the cheapest red wine on the list, which was an Australian 1990 Rockford Shiraz from the Barossa Valley at pounds 15. It must have been a hot summer in the Barossa Valley: the wine was purple rather than red, and hit the back of the throat with corrosive force. The final impression, as they say in wine circles, was actually very fruity and rich. Two or three glasses of the stuff were definitely intoxicating.

For our main course my wife again stayed with the set dinner, and had osso bucco with grilled polenta. On her insistence, I stayed on the gluttons' programme - pan-fried sweetbreads with wild mushrooms, caramelised shallots and beetroot jus.

There were whole baby beetroots, as well as the jus. The sweetbreads themselves were pretty ambrosial, the mushrooms exquisite, the other vegetables almost as good - but the jus was such a wonderful mixture of fatty sweetness that I almost stopped listening to the couple opposite ('I've told him: 'It's your body, you can do what you like with it' ' - to which her companion responded, 'That's right]') or even to the Important Irish Businessman who was being so outrageously chatted up behind us by the horsey wife of a client. The marrowbone in my wife's osso bucco was fairly prize-winning, but after that superlative jus the rest of it tasted like common or garden stew.

For pudding we both renounced the big menu, with its terrine of three chocolates, Grand Marnier souffle omelette with an orange and lemon butter sauce, and returned to the set dinner. I had iced prune and armagnac parfait, which came with a jug of chocolate sauce and was pretty good. My wife ordered the traditional summer pudding, which she initially crooned over and then shrank back from in loathing, claiming they had put raspberry jam in it.

We had coffee in another heavily panelled room - the first one we went into had a calculating minx on a sofa with her stockinged feet in the lap of a slightly resentful young beau - and sat in matrimonial bliss for half an hour reading the free newspapers. Dinner for two, including tip and VAT, came to pounds 99.41.