Reckless in the face of the deepening recession, I lunched on consecutive days last weekend at Quod (superb pollack with winter vegetables each time, since you ask). On both occasions, the place was full to busting.

Sunday’s lunch rendezvous with friends had been relocated to this city centre favourite because our first choice, Gee’s, had no tables free until mid-afternoon. Obedient lot, we foodies, aren’t we? All doing our bit to spend the country out of trouble.

Of course, there are times when the bottom line is important. Twice in a couple of weeks, I have enjoyed meals that have made our money go a long way. The first was a special deal at Malmaison, which brought a three-course dinner for two, with a bottle of wine, for £29. This offer is available until the end of April, and you need to go online for details (www.malmaison.com). I had delicious citrus salmon with lemon and fennel, followed by roast fillet of sea trout with cauliflower purée and a tasting plate of cheeses. (Rosemarie’s shepherd’s pie, by contrast, was unpleasantly in-yer-face flavourwise and not approved — a rare Malmaison miss.) A feature of the Malmaison’s bargain menu is its use of local suppliers, some of whose names (including Hayman’s Fisheries and the Oxford Cheese Company) cropped up again at the great-value lunch we enjoyed last week at Brookes Restaurant. Lunch here, it has to be said, is always a bargain at £13.95 for three courses. Last Monday it was even more so for us, with Rosemarie’s status as an associate lecturer at Brookes entitling us to the full lunch for just £10.50 each.

It was some years since we had eaten in the restaurant, which is operated by first-year students on the university’s hospitality course, with professional chefs leading the team in the kitchen. It is managed by Sue Pueschel and her deputy James Franklin.

The menu that day was varied and inviting, with significant deviations from the somewhat samey selection offered in many restaurants these days. Besides what we ate, there were starters of pressed crab and hummus couscous with saffron vinaigrette and golden raisin purée (descriptions are nothing if not complete) and pan-fried haslet (now, there’s a novelty!) with onion seed crust and piccalilli. Among the mains were roasted vegetable, chestnut and rocket torte, and parpadelle with a ragu of root vegetables and olives, with goat’s cheese bruschetta and green salad.

That last, incidentally, did not have a description complete enough for one of our fellow customers. “The food we ordered,” he complained bitterly, “turned out not to be to our taste at all. Tomato and pasta and other rubbishy things.”

Amazingly, the staff allowed Mr Curmudgeon and his companion another choice from the menu. They are nothing if not accommodating here.

So what did we eat? I started with watercress soup, which had bags of peppery watercress flavour but which was slightly spoiled for me by a bitter tang to the red pepper rouille that was stirred into it. Wearing a hypercritical hat, I have to say I found the home-baked rolls a tad crumbly.

All was smiles from Rosemarie’s side of the table, however, where a roasted portabello mushroom, with butternut squash and sage, was being eaten with some relish and its topping, of a softly poached egg and hollandaise sauce with even more. The egg she found fresh as can be (sourced, presumably from the Jersey Cream Company, Upper Norton) and its cooking just to her taste.

She continued with roasted chuck steak with mashed root vegetables, and a sage and onion-flavoured Yorkshire pudding on spiced red cabbage. Not the most refined cut, of course, the steak was just the slightest bit dry but full of flavour. Cumin lent a happy touch to the cabbage. I ate a generous piece of seared halibut, cooked absolutely right, on a tangy chorizo cassoulet in which the pieces of sausage were just a shade too chewily obvious. (Smaller bits would have been better.) There was a round ‘fondant’ of smoked aubergine, in which I discerned no smokiness, and paprika veloutée.

The cheese that followed was announced in advance to be a cheddar. Supplies had run out, however, and it turned out to be a wonderfully creamy round of goat’s cheese (Crottin de Chavignol, from the Loire), served with shreds of celery, melba toast and a fine fruit pickle. Rosemarie had lemon brulée tart with caramelised pink grapefruit, which was judged delicious in all respects.

Following this first-class lunch (I said I was nit-picking) we were able to compliment the students who served it. They were a good advertisement for the high quality of Brookes’ teaching — as I said but Rosemarie certainly could not.