I spent a week at Hampton Court last month for reasons only tangentially linked to Cardinal Wolsey, and was intrigued to notice, embedded in the small Thames bridge that separated the palace from my hotel, a stone commemorating its opening by the Prince of Wales in July, 1933.

Now, the Prince of Wales in question would have been the one who later became, briefly, Edward VIII, and then Duke of Windsor, and who was having, of course, a very good year. "Hurrah for 1933," he no doubt said to himself as he snipped the ribbon. "First my old friend Adolf's marvellous result in the German elections, and now this excellent bridge." But then where, I wonder, did he go for his lunch? Because the small huddle of inhabited buildings either side of the bridge, in the long historical shadow cast by the castle, is not exactly replete with terrific eating opportunities. There is a Zizi (not really Edward's sort of place) and a number of sandwich bars, a Chinese takeaway, a Thai, a couple of Indians.

Slim pickings in the hinterland of what was once the favourite residence of England's hungriest king.

Fortunately, though, while strolling on the palace side of the river around ten to one on my first day, I spotted a gastropub across the water whose deck was rammed with merry Monday lunchers, and decided I could in good conscience use Edward's bridge to get there without in any sense tacitly approving his politics.

The Albany is a modern joint with nice views, friendly, efficient South African staff of the type they print on rolls and export here by the thousand, does a lovely pint of Timothy Taylor, nine other draft beers, and offers pizzas, pastas and salads, as well as the more gastropubby dishes, as pubs in the boondocks will, because what they like out here is a little bit of everything.

I had very good roasted breast and leg of chicken with lemon and confit garlic and French fries for a tenner, as well as a peppy salad and spruce, buttery greens. Other familiar offerings include five-spice, slow-roasted pork belly, calves' liver and mash, ribeye and fillet steaks. If you're doing the maze — fill up here first.

And if you don't find your way out of it till after dark, then you could do worse than grab a room at the Carlton Mitre. I didn't eat in the restaurant proper, but I had room service sent up most evenings and enjoyed a blinding bit of roast salmon on wilted spinach; a spinach and mozzarella salad with really good fresh cheese; roast chicken on a mild cassoulet with some good, dense sausage in it, which was a real eye-opener: the drier, paler bird gives much more tension on the plate than the usual duck confit version, and deserves to catch on.

If you must have Italian, you'll have to settle for Café Fiamma, a new-ish Italian five minutes down the road, where a rather formal fellow in a tie looked at me askance when I walked in alone with a newspaper one Tuesday lunchtime wearing jeans and a T-shirt. What did he expect, a ruff?

There's a big field out the back which gives a nice summery feel to the meal, and the two pairs of old dears chomping pizzas who were my only fellow diners looked happy enough. I had an insalata mista with unripe tomatoes, but rather a good bowl of frutti di mare, with squid and mussels and two sizes of prawn in a sweet-ish ragu. It's not Locanda Locatelli, but when you're the only Italian in town, you don't have to be.

That night I walked the few, small streets of the hamlet in search of a real treasure for you. Well, for me, really, but one I could tell you about afterwards. The best bet looked to be a place called Le Petit Nantais — a peek through the window showed fairy lights draped on spray-painted twigs, ranks of commemorative berets, wall-mounted rugby shirts (we were not far from Twickenham, of course) and a menu of dishes not entirely unrelated to the specialities of the Vendée.

At 8pm there were a handful of tables of local foursomes and a young courting couple bolstering themselves for the trembling nervousness of the coming hours with moules frites, lager and steak "medium to well".

The food was disappointing. I started with prawns in "garlic sauce", an odd phrase for a French restaurant to use, which was a poorly judged cream thing, very salty, with unidentified chopped greens, the shellfish all mulchy and wet, their status as a "special" perhaps the result of a freezer on the fritz. My main was a confit leg of duck on a squishy cassoulet of white beans, whose nuclear heat and speed of delivery, coupled with the softness of the bird's skin, suggested that it had been microwaved, which is not the end of the world (you get that more and more in France, too, these days), but a bit of a shame. It came with a jammy honey sauce that gave it a faint flavour of 1973, not in a good way. And £7.20 for a glass of dateless Côte du Rhône Villages is, I think, ungenerous.

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