Eating Out: Regional cheer and rich pickings

THE CROSSWAYS HOTEL AND RESTAURANT

Lewes Road, Wilmington, near Polegate, East Sussex BN26 5SG.

Tel: 0323 482455. Open for dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

Four-course dinner plus coffee, pounds 21.95 a head. Visa and Access accepted.

THERE are many features of life at the Crossways Hotel, Wilmington, that would be recognisable to a sophisticated international traveller from anywhere on earth.

One or other of the two male proprietors hovers over your table after you've sat down, enumerating the specialities with that kind of theatrical enthusiasm encouraged in waiters in America. 'Tonight's speciality is . . .' followed by a lot of ecstatic description of things being marinaded in this and that, lightly flamed over charcoal, or sprinkled with crushed walnuts. The decor, too, would be familiar to any American visitor: a kind of camped-up William Morris, with silhouettes on the lavatory doors, one showing a little Mabel Lucy Atwell-shaped girl sitting on a potty, the other a chubby male arching a curve of pee into the same kind of po.

What might seem strange to an outsider or to a world-weary diner familiar with the fleshpots of the metropolis is the sheer saloon-bar sense of celebration: the successful businessfolk of my old home town of Eastbourne having a blow-out, augmented by walkers from the South Downs Way and other travellers drawn by the pounds 45 Dinner, Bed and Breakfast Gourmet Break.

We live too near to take advantage of the Gourmet Break, though in the circumstances it would probably have been cheaper. It was an icy night. I'd decided to spare my poor long-suffering wife (who does the driving), not to mention my own nerves, and had booked a taxi there and back. When I asked the proprietor how long he thought it would take us to have dinner - two hours? - he seemed appalled. 'Oh, three hours at least]'

You get the picture. No one looks underweight. Cheery old boys stow away the ice cream, there are glasses of beer on some of the tables, and some of the guests hold their knives pen-wise. This, of course, is historically more correct, and the way people in 17th- century paintings held their knives before U and non-U were thought of, but it creates a mood of regional good cheer you wouldn't find at the River Cafe or Terence Conran's new Chop House.

The first time I tried to book a table the restaurant was closed as the proprietor was having a lie down after representing the South-east in some fiesta of Regional

Cooking. Regional Cooking is what you get. Quite what South-east English Regional Cooking consists of is hard to define. You might expect, for instance, a menu of ethnic-sounding 'Oo-ar' swede-bashing Sussex yokel foods from the age of early photography. You would be disappointed. The South-east, nowadays at least, is sociologically pretty rich. So, it has to be admitted, is the Regional Cooking.

For starters there was, and usually is, though they change the menu every month, Leek and Hazelnut Cheesecake, Terrine of Smoked Fish, Seafood Pancake, Spicy Salmon Cakes and Warm Pigeon Salad. While we were thinking about that some little buns arrived, made of cheesy pastry. My wife ordered a warm quail salad, which was crowned with a poached quail's egg, and very nice. In the spirit of research into Regional Cooking I asked for a Seafood Pancake. This I had my reservations about. It was served in an oblong stainless-steel instrument dish, and might have been delicious had it not been for the heavy cheese topping, which congealed to the edge of the dish. It brought back memories of posh Eastbourne restaurants in the Fifties.

The main courses were also at the rich end of things: Chicken and Chestnut Parcels (chicken breast filled with chestnut stuffing and wrapped in filo pastry, served with woodland mushroom sauce) and Game Pudding (a rich traditional steamed suet pudding, filled with a selection of game). The most expensive dish, carrying a pounds 2.50 surcharge on the pounds 21.95 inclusive price of the dinner, was Fillet of Beef with Stilton (prime English fillet steak sauteed in butter and served with a grilled Stilton topping). There was also Lamb with Leeks and Lentils, Devilled Duck, or the Fish Dish of the Day.

Being your conscientious restaurant critic, and ever grateful for it, I allowed my wife to have the Fish Dish of the Day, which consisted of poached monkfish, scallops and salmon - she had already struck lucky with the quail salad - while I went for the Game Pudding. Just as I was wondering about the wisdom of that, two bowls of mushroom soup were delivered, unordered, to keep us going. It was creamy, and very rich.

Looking back I am amazed by my lack of savoir vivre in ordering the Game Pudding after a Seafood Omelette. It was certainly a very cold night, and there was a nip of matrimonial disharmony in the air, but even in the interests of exploring the Regional Cooking I think it was misguided. The pudding, as puddings go, was unexceptionable, with a lot of venison and what tasted like rabbit in a good suety dome of pudding that would have been perfect if I'd been walking all day and hadn't eaten since breakfast. As it was, it made me feel very guilty about eating ever again in a world where so many go hungry.

My wife, meanwhile was enjoying a little star-shaped pattern of fish, and repeating all the amusing jokes she had made at my expense while staying with her brother in New York. I was considerably helped through all this by a bottle of Mondavi Californian red wine called Woodbridge, and sufficiently inflamed by it to go the whole hog and finish with a local Regional Delicacy made of chopped bananas covered with butterscotch sauce in a sort of brandy-snap basket with a glass of Beaumes de Venise. My wife complained that the chocolate ice cream she ordered was 'too rich'.

The next day I walked straight up Firle Beacon to try and atone. If you're going to the Crossways I'd suggest you do the walk first, and make it a very long one.

The whole glutinous experience cost pounds 66.55 for the two of us.-