Restaurant at the Angel Hotel

Located on the west side of the generously wide plaza/street that separates it from the Cathedral, the Angel Hotel has about it an air of spacious times and generous proportions. The Cathedral has recently acquired a superb tower that has cost £10m to build and was the only serious religious building to be assisted by the Millennium Fund. The effect of it is to transform a small town from its role as county capital to a Cathedral city.

As if to celebrate this conversion the Angel Hotel, a former coaching in with the drive-through entrance still retained, has expanded and refurbished with dramatic results, and a hotel that tended to be regarded as an overflow when nearby Newmarket ran out of beds, now stands in its own right. Two brasseries take care of the wining and dining, the Vaults, located in a superb stone-vaulted space, almost certainly once part of a larger Abbey, and the Abbeygate, a richly costumed and strikingly decorated stately room that looks straight on to the magnificent Abbey Gatehouse.

We eat in the Vaults, and for all my love of good architecture and stone in particular I would have preferred the Abbeygate, where the atmosphere is less sepulchral.

The same menu serves both, and pays homage to local produce and ingredients, with venison a particular favourite. Starters might consist of Suffolk ham hock terrine with a celery, walnut and apple salsa, garnished with salsa crisps, or hot smoked salmon with shaved beetroot and sour cream.

More local colour amongst the main courses with a trio of local pork; rare breed belly, the famous Newmarket sausage and roast fillet, with savoy cabbage, celeriac, wholegrain mustard mash and Aspal cider sauce, or pan fried sea bass and seared scallops on a Thai scented rice cake with stir fried vegetables, pink ginger and a coconut and lime sauce.

A list of about 50 wines offers 12 by the glass or bumper.