The swanky good looks of the decor at Cockadoo Bar and Restaurant and the matching visual appeal of the food served there are instantly apparent from Jon Lewis’s photographs. This is surely one of the most colourful pages we have presented to readers of this column.

The cheering sight is in stark contrast to the glum appearance of these same premises just a few months ago. Cockadoo, you see, occupies a listed Georgian building which from April 2005 had stood shut, shuttered and shockingly unkempt beside one of Oxfordshire’s busiest roads.

As the Harcourt Arms, it had for generations catered for the needs of travellers passing through Nuneham Courtenay in their coaches (horse-drawn ones at first) and cars. But fashions (and laws) change: today’s motorists have swapped the pleasures of a hot lunch and a pint (or three) for a service station’s microwaved burger or a sandwich on the move. Roadside taverns have needed to transform into destination venues in their own right. Cockadoo – under its obviously very talented owner Allan Yeung – is clearly well on the way to becoming one of these.

It helps, of course, that the village is close to such centres of population as Abingdon, Wallingford and, especially Oxford. Prospective visitors should note that it is well served by Thames Travel’s excellent bus service. The stop is a few yards up the road, though for a reason I cannot fathom the late-night buses – of which commendably there are a good number – use a stop at the southern end of the village.

I know this because it was with Thames Travel that Rosemarie and I, together with our neighbour Paul, paid our first visit. This was two days before Christmas – a time when all the traditional fare in prospect (and, indeed, already consumed at office lunches and the like) made one eager for food of a different kind.

Others were clearly eager for it too, to judge by the merry crowd we encountered in Cockadoo’s smartly appointed, 100+ seater restaurant, putting away thoughts of turkey and Brussels sprouts as they sampled such dishes as soft-shelled crab with chilli, Japanese seaweed and cucumber salad, Szechuan Cheng-Tu Chicken, grilled ostrich with Mandarin sauce, Mongolian lamb and red or green Thai curry.

You will notice the rich variety of food in what is usually called Asian Fusion or Pan-Asian style. Allan himself calls it “Oriental fine dining” – and indeed strays out of the continent altogether with fillet steak and chips, slow-cooked oxtail and minestrone soup.

Something to please everyone, then? Well, it certainly pleased us.

Rather than making individual choices from among the 19 starters and six soups, Rosemarie and I chose to begin the meal with the Seafood Mixed Starter. Like all dishes here, it was beautifully presented in the same way as the plate Allan is holding in the picture above (although this, I think, is the Cockadoo Mixed Starter since I can spot a stick of chicken satay). We had tender (that is unrubbery) fried squid with salt and chilli, prawn on toast, crispy prawn, fish cakes, prawn satay and a dish rather unappetisingly styled ‘Golden Bags’ (actually, rather tasty dumplings).

‘Crispy chicken balls’, which figured in Paul’s starter, might cause momentary confusion to those used, as we are, to the ‘everything in’ approach to rooster cookery as practised, for instance, in Greece. Fear not, though, these were not what the name appeared to suggest; nor, in fact, were they crispy. But they were much enjoyed by Paul, as were his Shanghai prawn dumplings.

He was equally delighted with his main course. Massaman curry, one of the Thai specialities, featured tender pieces of lamb with peanut, onion and potato. Had he wished, he could have replaced the lamb with chicken, beef, fish, duck or prawns.

My choice of main course was Rendang lamb, an Indonesian dish that is traditionally made with beef. The chunks of very tender meat were offered with a spicy sauce featuring curry paste, desiccated coconut, coconut milk, spring onion, curry leaf and chilli. For Rosemarie there was crispy shredded chilli beef, which she thought excellent. Two types of rice (Jasmine and egg fried) and a dish of stir-fried mixed vegetables completed this memorable banquet.

Except, of course, that Rosemarie found room for pudding – a super chocolate cake.