Tucked as it in within the walls of the old Pudsey Conservative Club, there is little on the outside to indicate what might lie within.

Which instantly makes you hope you might have stumbled on one of those elusive hidden gems we all hanker after but rarely find.

Please, please, we thought, let it be good. Fingers, arms, legs, the lot were crossed for this one.

Handily, The Stroom has its own medium-sized car park so we deposited the car and made our way to the back of the restaurant to the Queen's Room – the sort of secondary venue where Sunday lunch is served.

The entrance immediately opens up on to the dining room.

To the right are a couple of comfy leather sofas where you can peruse the menu and have a drink if, like us, you were waiting for other members of your party.

Strangely, however, the bar is in entirely the opposite direction – within view but most definitely out of reach.
Facelift

Thankfully, you can order a drink from your seat – if you can catch the eye of a waiter – but how much easier and more pleasant would it have been to have the waiting area in the bar?

This would appear to be a lack of careful planning rather than a concession to any sort of listed building regulation, because the rest of the room has certainly seen a facelift from the times when people might have met here for various sedate social pursuits.

There are other peculiarities in the dining room proper: the floors are beautiful dark wood and the chairs are a lucious brown leather. But the walls are that strange shade of institutional blue and starched white linen adorns the tabletops. A curious blend of modern and old-fashioned that just doesn't quite gel.

But, on further consideration, it may just be that this is a very clever piece of thinking from the owners.

Looking around at the other diners it is clear that this is very much a family destination. You could bring your teenage daughter here and your granny and neither of them is going to feel out of place.

So on to the menu, which refreshingly covers just one side of an A4 sheet.

And, better still, it really is quite extraordinarily good value. There are pretty much two options: two courses for £12 or the full three for £14.

The starters are traditional Sunday lunch fare: prawn cocktail, soup of the day and melon-type dishes.

I opted for the Greek salad while my partner threw caution to the wind and stumped up an additional £2 to upgrade to the king prawns.

The shellfish was plump and juicy, and made our dining partners' prawn cocktails look a little sad in comparison, though they seemed pleased enough with their choice.

The salad was good, with a nice blend of tomatoes, both fresh and sun-dried, a nice amount of feta, a tangy dressing and a few black olives thrown in for good measure. All in all, pretty faultless.

It is, though, the main course that really shines here. You could opt for salmon or chicken, but it is the roast rib of beef that is the star attraction and all four of us ordered it.

It comes in a hearty-sized portion, with a gigantic Yorkshire pudding, making it already a substantial plateful. Then the vegetables arrive. And they keep coming: mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, carrots and peas. Just when you think the heaving table cannot take any more, out comes a bowl of cauliflower. Then extra gravy.

All are well cooked and if you want more you only have to ask.

As it was we struggled to make our way through them, though one of our party still found space for extra roasties.

The meat was melt-in-the-mouth tender and the gravy is nothing short of glorious. Is there any better food experience than cracking a gap in your Yorkshire pudding and filling it with gravy? If there is I can't think of one.

This is comfort food at its best and perfect now our so-called summer has been and gone in the blink of an eye.

With four clean plates, we debated whether we could find room for dessert. When we see the menu, incredibly we found we could. At this price it would be almost rude not to, right?

Again, it's crowd-pleasers like pavlova, ice cream sundae and fruit salad. There's also the warm chocolate brownie with macadamia nut ice cream, and it is this which captures our attention.

The brownie is warm with just the right amount of chew and the nut ice cream has a delicious bite – every mouthful exploding with flavour. Our partners take the ice cream sundae – a huge mound of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice creams with an additional brandy snap – and the fruit salad, which is adorned with strawberries and melon as well as the ubiquitous apple and orange. Both are again declared "very nice".

With four glasses of wine, a couple of other drinks, some fizzy water and my partner's £2 upgrade, the whole bill came in at less than £80 – for four.

At that sort of price, you'd usually be looking at one of the big chain eateries where it all tastes a bit pre-packaged and tainted with the ping of the microwave.

And why go there when you can enjoy excellent home-cooked food in an atmosphere that comes without a side order of over-priced play areas and flashing fruit machines?

Yes, The Stroom isn't perfect – on occasions we waited so long for a glass of wine I could have picked the grapes, barrelled and bottled it myself – but I'll forgive it for a few lapses in service.

After all with food, this good, at prices this keen, it would be churlish to complain.

So, it would appear then that Oliver has indeed found that sought-after hidden gem.

And I'd love to tell you about it, I really would. But then it wouldn't be secret anymore would it?

The Stroom
Chapeltown, Pudsey, Leeds, LS28 7RZ.
Tel: 0113 257 0140
Web: www.thestroom.co.uk
Opening times: lunch Tues to Fri noon to 2pm; Sunday lunch (in the Queen's Room) noon to 2.30pm; dinner Tues to Thurs 6pm to 9.30pm, Fri and Sat 6pm to 10.30pm; early bird Tues to Thurs orders by 9pm and Fri orders by 7pm.

FOOD 4/5
VALUE 5/5
ATMOSPHERE 3/5
SERVICE 3/5