Olive Branch, Hebden Bridge

Somewhere to its back is the Rochdale Canal. A few doors away is a cycle shop called Blazing Saddles. Down the street is the town's municipally-owned cinema which has proper films and sells mugs of tea and home-made Eccles cakes.

You could go and watch a film after an early supper at the Olive Branch, where for most of the time they do a two-course meal for 10 and the most expensive bottle of wine is 12.50. The house wine is 10 and comes in three shades, so a meal for two with a bottle of decent wine will set you back 30.

This refusal to charge silly prices for wine (or spirits and beers) is attractive. The customer can see honesty in the modest mark-up and will return with friends.

For people like me, who do not wish to pay three or four times the shelf price just because I am in a restaurant and someone is telling me the wine tastes of newly gathered nectar, it means I will have wine if I wish.

You'd be daft or careless or maybe just peckish not to have the 10 deal. Most "starters" are 3.95 to 4.50 and main courses are from 9.50 for a vegetable kebab to 13 for mixed kebabs, so a tenner for two is good value.

This eastern Mediterranean cooking has a deserved reputation for healthy eating. Much of it is cooked on skewers in small cubes of flesh or vegetable. This means the time from raw to ready-to-eat is reduced – useful when time was short and you had many miles to travel on your horse. I suppose.

The meal this night started with a mixed meze for two. The meze is akin to tapas, forky bits of this and that. Typically, there will be stuffed vine leaves, a savoury rice-based filling wrapped tightly in edible vine leaves. Bought in? I don't know.

This menu also has Feta cheese, hummus, olives, tomato, dips of yogurt-based cacik and the mild falafel balls of ground chick peas, plus leaf salad and hot, thick unleavened flat bread. It proves an interesting start to the meal. This was early doors on a Tuesday and the tables were filling with patrons who are on familiar terms with the staff.

It is a good feeling, and the food is fine and with lots of guilt-free vegetarian stuff, too, such as haloumi cheese and dippy things.

Some of the best food I have had was in Istanbul at the Four Seasons Hotel, a lunch buffet to keep you there until the honey-rich cakes arrived with afternoon coffee.

Starters at the Olive Branch include the mainstream international staple, The Prawn Cocktail, and the get-fat-quick corn chips smothered in melted cheese, neither of which has any rightful place in a Turkish bistro.

There is calamari in batter, hummus with pita and salad, kebabs of lamb or chicken with salad and tortillas, or bumper servings of vaprak sarma – the stuffed vine leaves.

The presentation is good and the service is friendly, from the handsome Turkish gent and the pretty local girl.

The next table was having the grilled haloumi cheese, which looked good. They then moved on to kavurma, which are a Turkish take on the Tex-Mex fajita. This is a selection of the dips and cheese and salads, and a choice of hot vegetarian, chicken, lamb, king prawn or a mixed serving of all, to wrap in tortillas.

I chose "som baltigi", a fillet of salmon baked in the oven and served with pilaf rice, the cacik and salads and, unscripted on the menu or in my dietary rgime, some extremely good chips. This was excellent. The salmon was neither dry nor oily and had good flavour and texture. A criticism would be that the same accompaniments come with many of the first and main courses, so there is a repetition on the plate. It makes things easy in the kitchen.

For a change of pace there are pizzas, from 6.50 for the basic, but classic, tomato and cheese Margherita.

The meal ended with Turkish coffee, a little cup of coarsely ground beans which was expensive at 2 and not a lot of fun. A glass of water is on the side to wash away the coffee grits: not an experience I shall repeat, but I shall go back to the Olive Branch. The food is not expensive. The atmosphere, aka the ambience, is relaxed and convivial.

It just feels right.

The Olive Branch Bistro, 21 West End, Hebden Bridge HX7 8UQ. Open every day from 11am-11pm. Two-course meal for 10 except Friday and Saturday evenings. Level access. Free and paid parking nearby. Booking

recommended at busy times. The streets can be rowdy at night.

Tel: 01422 842299.

YP MAG 3/7/10