So, I got together with wine writer Malcolm Gluck to provide a kind of gastronomic dating service for my dishes. I came up with recipes and Malcolm conjured up the right wines to go with them. In the book we've grouped the recipes into vegetables, fish and shellfish, meat, poultry and game, desserts and cheeses.Each chapter has insights into the wines for different flavoured food. You want to offer some knock-out flavours, simple but brilliant dishes that will surprise and please everyone. But that doesn't necessarily make it easy to choose wine that complements the food. Real ales are the stars in the bars, although wine wins at dinner in the top-rated restaurant.75 Kingsgate Street, Winchester, Hants (01962 853834). Roast duck with sparkling shiraz? I don't want to spoil one of the punchlines in my new book but I do want to show how unexpected bedfellows can make great partners.

The Simple Art of Marrying Food and Wine offers the complete solution to entertaining by suggesting what to drink with each dish. Steamed steak and ale pudding and Lakeland lamb go very well with beer.Tirril, Cumbria (01768 863219)Wykeham Arms Atmospherically ancient inn and the most gastro of all Hampshire brewery George Gale's pubs. They're also served in jugs for sharing over dinner in the restaurant.Hook Norton, Oxon (01608 737387)Queens Head Inn Tirril Brewery's own village pub, serving its Brougham and Academy Ales from pumps in the two bars, and as often as not in the restaurant. A pub lunch of rillettes or fine cheeses with a pint doesn't get better.Dargate, Kent (01227 751360)Gate Hangs High Hook Norton Brewery's great ales like Hooky Dark and Old Hooky get the billing they deserve on a beer menu, matching dishes to each ale. EThe Hop Pole, Albion Buildings, Upper Bristol Road, Bath (01225 446327)Food ** Ambience **** Service *** £56.60 for two without drinksSide orders: Ale and heartyThe Dove Top cooking in a Shepherd Neame pub that nurtures a local feel and the Kent brewery's ales, like Master Brew, Bishops Finger and Spitfire. So why deliver something that looks like convenience food?We finished with an excellent brownie and a boldly tart lemon and lime cheesecake - but unfortunately it was the chips that stuck in the mind. Perhaps you already do, but in that case why go to so much trouble to make them look and taste like McCain's? A fat, hand-cut chip is a reliable hallmark of a good gastropub - a dish in which the ratio of labour to customer satisfaction is overwhelmingly in your favour.

Serving them sliced may be a clich?but at least it allows you to check.Chips: Make your own. But my lamb escalopes (£12.95) could have done with at least another 45 seconds on the grill and five more minutes in a warm place to relax. The fillet of Aberdeen Angus beef (£15.95, you bandits) was spot on - ordered medium (children are very conservative about these things) and served that way. To my mind the potato and garlic soup (£4.95) was far too light on garlic and far too heavy on cream anyway. But those deficiencies wouldn't have been quite so obvious if it had been properly seasoned.

And if underseasoning is a policy, designed to deal with the sodium phobics, then at least put a dish of decent sea salt on the table for the rest of us.Pink: Really tricky one this, since one man's pink is another man's raw. Lollo rosso should be banished anyway - almost as tasteless as the muzak which accompanied it.Salt: A horribly undervalued ingredient these days. Either a dish can stand without a garnish or it deserves a properly dressed one. These didn't.Garnish: Banish those pointless ruffs of lollo rosso, which appear to be used solely to disguise the alarmingly large portion of plate which would be left uncovered by two meagre crab cakes.

And if you really insist on two they need to punch well above their weight in terms of taste. If you're selling Thai-style crab-cakes at £6.95 a portion, most people would expect more than two, given that they're the size of large walnuts. Serving two of any small item is a mistake anyway; the aesthetics are lousy and the economics are insultingly transparent. in my case a pint of Gem, a bright, beginner's bitter, followed by a pint of Barnstormer, a darker ale with a distinctive chocolatey note ... both with more than enough flavour to justify a place on the menu.Portions: The gastropub trend may be taken in some quarters as a licence to print money, but there is such a thing as decorum.