Northleach, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (01451 860 244). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £90
Nobody needs dessert. Normal people don't run into restaurants at lunch or dinner shouting: "I'm famished! Bring me the dessert menu!" They might want to, but they don't. People might stare and point. So they choose a main or a starter. Of course we have all had emergency cake moments: mid-afternoon, when we are furious with the world, or the world is furious with us; when the only medicine for our mood is a juggernaut of sugar. But nice is not the same as necessary.
Sure, our bodies need sugar. In evolutionary terms, sugar gave us the energy we required to outrun predators. Or if not our predators, then the guy running next to us so the predator would get them instead. The thing is that the human race is now short on predators. I've had a good look around my corner of London and there is nothing I really need to run away from, if you don't include the charity muggers outside Brixton tube, and that bloke with the megaphone and the Bible who keeps barking: "Do you want to be a winner or a sinner?" (For the record, I'm sinner all the way.)
The dismal truth is that our bodies can get all the sugar we need from all the foodstuffs not marked "dessert". Which means that if you really want to get a sense of a restaurant's grasp of the meaning of the word "indulgence", it is to the dessert menu you must look. They are all about the unnecessary.
Certainly it's the case with the sweet choices at the Wheatsheaf in Northleach, a smart pub near Cheltenham. Too often I get to that part of the meal and I've run out of space with which to do it justice. Not today. Witness the Marathon pudding. It takes a chef of real appetite to devise something as marvellous as this. I can only assume executive chef Antony Ely, who has worked at both the Mirabelle and the Square in London's Mayfair, is of a similar vintage to me. Any younger and he might have called it the Snickers pudding. Except that doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Marathon, the original name for Snickers.
At base it's a chocolate fondant but one hiding a secret so shameless, so unreserved it would never be able to stand alone on a plate. Instead it is baked in a cast-iron dish. Like an unruly child, it needs boundaries. It is served still warm. Slip your spoon through the tumescent dome and you find below not just a liquid chocolate centre but also a mother lode of soft caramel with crushed peanuts. There is a scoop of their own vanilla ice cream on top to lubricate and cool things down. It is customary to describe a good food moment as the most fun you can have with your clothes on; for this one I was tempted to take some of my clothes off. And all for £6.
In keeping with its honey-coloured Cotswold setting, the Wheatsheaf is extremely civilised. There was a time when I sneered at such poise and gloss, when I agonised over what felt like its furious retreat from real life, but as I grow older I crave it. Real life can be exhausting. A properly upholstered and varnished version of real life can be a very welcome thing indeed. The Wheatsheaf is exactly that. It's an old inn with glowering paintings and varnished floors but also something else: a gentle buzz that says you can be yourself here. It belongs to the same people who own the Tavern in Cheltenham, a curious place which flipflops between an unconvincing menu of dirty Americana and a much steadier bunch of Mediterranean dishes.
Here, there's a bit of the Mediterranean – a fine bowl of oily, salty Marcona almonds are there to be picked at – but for the most part it leans much more towards English pastoral by way of Cotswold gloss. We're not far from the Vale of Evesham, so here are perfect asparagus, chargrilled so you can taste a little smoke and served with the salt/sweet of room-temperature Serrano ham plus the crunch of those almonds. More impressive still is a salad of fresh peas and ribbons of mandolinned cucumber and watercress, with flakes of hot smoked salmon in a crème fraîche dressing. It's the full Vaughan Williams with a touch of "hey nonny!" and back notes of "Greensleeves". It's bloody good.
The grill menu includes bavette and peppered flat iron, the kind of cuts only the idiots leave behind. I have thick slices of chargrilled calves' liver, blushed properly pink at the middle, with a rasher of crisped bacon and, to cut through it all, shallots cooked down in sherry vinegar. A shiny tranche of hake comes with petits pois à la française and the fresh crunch of raw radish. For exotica we order a side of crunchy greens with chilli and another of braised courgettes with mint and pine nuts. Starters are £6 or £7, mains in the teens.
Elsewhere on that dessert menu is a "peach melba" tart which isn't, really, but it does good service as a frangipane tart with peaches and a little raspberry ice cream. In any case it was always going to be overshadowed by the ludicrous joys of the Marathon pudding.
The wine list is a serious piece of work. On the one hand it has lots of choice from the high teens to the mid-30s. On the other, it's the sort of list which bothers to distinguish between right- and left-bank Bordeaux, and prices them for people up from London for the weekend who you know you wouldn't like. There's also a cigar list. For those sorts of men. The ones you could never tire of punching. Don't worry: the Wheatsheaf is divided into a number of spaces – there are always ways by which to avoid the hell of other people.
It's tempting, having enjoyed a meal which falls easily into the column marked "thoroughly agreeable", to get a little overexcited, to throw adjectives at it in such a way that the people following you come away muttering: "It's not all that." So I won't be too promiscuous with those. The Wheatsheaf is the kind of place that gives me reason to believe there is genuine substance to this country's restaurant sector. It's the sort of restaurant that feeds you well and doesn't make a fuss about it. We need more of that.
Jay's news bites
■ Talking of killer desserts it's time to confess my fondness for the small Creams chain of dessert and gelato bars. A franchise operation, it recalls the shiny ice-cream bars of the early 80s. As well as standard flavours they serve Ferrero Rocher ice cream, which frankly is genius. They'll also blitz your favourite chocolate bars into milkshakes. On Saturday afternoons they're rammed with families. Just don't tell your GP creamscafe.com
■ A search of amazon.co.uk's growing food department reveals that the best-selling item in grocery is Biona Organic Raw Virgin Coconut Oil. Perhaps it's the versatility. As one review says: "I've got one tub in the kitchen to use when frying food. Another tub is in the bathroom to use as a moisturiser for eyelashes, dry patches on my face, lips, elbows, feet and hands." You can't say that of Flora.
■ Another way to lose a Sunday: the exuberant Japanese café Flesh & Buns in London's Covent Garden has launched a Sunday brunch, offering unlimited Japanese food and drinks from £29 a head fleshandbuns.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
