Brosh, Cheltenham

It's a convention in Hollywood films: the small family-run business that struggles when some soulless corporate giant opens on the same block. This week's restaurant, Brosh in Cheltenham, would be perfectly cast as the plucky underdog - a husband-and-wife-owned fledgling, with a Middle Eastern menu, where everything is made from scratch on the premises, right down to the cheese. The Goliath in our story is a mega-branch of the pizza chain Zizzi, which opened at around the same time as Brosh in a converted church across the road, and where you'd have to scratch around to find a dish on the premises that didn't include cheese.

It's a convention in Hollywood films: the small family-run business that struggles when some soulless corporate giant opens on the same block. This week's restaurant, Brosh in Cheltenham, would be perfectly cast as the plucky underdog - a husband-and-wife-owned fledgling, with a Middle Eastern menu, where everything is made from scratch on the premises, right down to the cheese. The Goliath in our story is a mega-branch of the pizza chain Zizzi, which opened at around the same time as Brosh in a converted church across the road, and where you'd have to scratch around to find a dish on the premises that didn't include cheese.

On paper, it's obvious who audiences would be rooting for - surely the little guy with the quirky menu, rather than the giant with the stained-glass windows and slightly creepy atmosphere of recent deconsecration? In practice, it hasn't quite worked out that way. Zizzi, which seats 140, is regularly packed to the choirstalls, with more of the hungry faithful queuing out of the door at weekends. Meanwhile Brosh, which seats just 40, is struggling to fill its tables at lunchtimes. Sometimes life just doesn't work out like the movies.

Brosh's owner and head chef is Raviv Hadad, whose cooking I admired at Bristol's Severnshed. Originally from Israel, Raviv worked at The River Cafe and Moro in London before heading west. His cooking at Brosh, his first independent venture, encompasses the various cuisines of the Jewish diaspora. It's Claudia Roden territory - Moorish, Arabic, Jewish and Mediterranean. The sample menus he sent me were enough to have me boarding the train to Cheltenham on my next day off. Salad of roast beetroot with yoghurt and mint. Golden chicken soup. Slow-cooked oxtail, butterbean and spinach with caramelised onion. Duck breast roasted with pomegranate molasses. Come on, admit it, you're practically on the train yourself.

It's not hard to see why the Hadads' three-year search for premises led them to Cheltenham's Montpellier district. A kempt Regency enclave of antique shops and restaurants, it's so picturesquely bohemian it makes Hampstead look like Toxteth. Brosh is handily situated between a butchers and a catering supply shop. There's a handsome sandstone church over the road - oh sorry, that's right, it's a branch of Zizzi - and a charming old cinema in the next block - ah, that's a restaurant too, I see. Brosh itself has a sunny front counter, where you can perch on a high stool and snack on mezze. The room then narrows into a long, dark dining area, which on the lunchtime we visited felt slightly austere, thanks to its bare whitewashed walls and wooden tables, a no-piped-music policy, and, sad to say, not many guests.

When the food starts arriving, though, the fun begins. We kicked off with a trio of Middle Eastern standards from the mezze menu - hummus, falafel and babaganoush (aubergine and tahini purée) - all freshly prepared, delicately spiced and served with a springy home-made sourdough. My companion, a non-meat-eater, revealed that, amazingly, she'd never before encountered a falafel. Brosh's version, fluffy and parsley-green inside, with a crisp sesame-seed-coated carapace, was a winning introduction. Next, a salad of globe artichoke, fried in a light batter, then tossed with toasted almonds, and partnered with zingy, pomegranate-dressed rocket, coriander and mint leaves.

From a menu bristling with potential Dr Who villains - ftut, zatar and zug among them - my friend chose for her main course something called malawach; not an alien emperor but a fried Yemeni flatbread, rather like a paratha, which came with a simple herb-dressed salad of boiled egg and tomato, plus some fiery harissa (chilli paste).

Brosh uses local free-range or organic suppliers whenever possible, and much of the meat comes from the (conveniently award-winning) neighbouring butchers. My roasted maize-fed chicken was notably juicy and full-flavoured, and the accompanying heap of bulgar, minced lamb, courgettes and creamy little chickpeas had all the virtues of great home cooking, but was so obviously labour-intensive you'd never get around to making it yourself.

The dessert menu reads as temptingly as the rest of the list. Any intentions of shunning it melted when a display stand containing a sample of each pudding was brought to the table. As if she hadn't eaten enough fried pastry, my guest was inexorably drawn to the baclava, a loose, hazelnutty affair lightly bound in honey. A Passover-influenced ice cream, flavoured with fennel seeds, cardamom, honey and nuts, was also good.

You can probably sense a big Hollywood happy ending just around the corner, but before we get there, a couple of negatives. It seems weird to go to the trouble of making all the food from scratch, and then serve bottled juices. The carrot and orange concoction I tried was almost Fanta-ishly grim. And some of the pricing seemed a little bit off. It's fair enough to charge £14.95 for my chicken dish, but £11.95 for the pastry, egg and tomato surprise was a bit steep, when the ingredients can't have cost more than a quid.

Still, when it comes to a choice between eating in a small restaurant oozing heart and soul, and scarfing a pizza in a converted church, I can only urge the people of Cheltenham to go for the little guy. Brosh is the kind of place that could restore your faith in eating out.

Brosh, 8 Suffolk Parade, Cheltenham (01242 227277)

Food
Ambience (but probably better in the evening)
Service

Around £25 a head without wine

SIDE ORDERS: EVER SO MOORISH

By Caroline Stacey

The Atlas

A gastropub that hasn't got above itself. Cumin, coriander and paprika are the key spices in southern Mediterranean dishes like couscous, beef tagine and grilled seabass.

16 Seagrave Road, London SW6 (020-7385 9129)

Coriander

Arabic cooking inspires this mainly organic deli and restaurant. Why the South American dishes? The Moorish influence on Spain travelled to the Americas.

5 Hove Manor Parade, Hove Street, Hove, East Sussex (01273 730850)

Kazbah

This atmospheric Oxford joint dishes up olives, other North African nibbles, and tagines and couscous in tapas sizes. Hummus is plentiful - as you'd expect in a student town.

25-27 Cowley Road, Oxford (01865 202920)

Moro

Loved by the literati, Moro is still unchallenged as London's best interpreter of Spanish and North African food - from fantastic bread to the delicate yoghurt and pistachio pudding.

34-36 Exmouth Market, London EC1 (020-7833 8336)