�The Foundry is a reasonably new bar and restaurant alongside the Forge, an existing and very popular music venue.

The latter has a reputation for cool jazz and world music, but sometimes an eaterie conjoined to a musical twin can feel like a poor relation.

Fortunately, The Foundry doesn’t fall into this category. Right from the off it was clear the place is not just here to make up the numbers, and the way our waitress enthusiastically described the menu for us made it clear that she had both sampled and enjoyed the offerings herself.

Culinary detail

Although the head chef is of Sardinian heritage and Italian attention to culinary detail is obvious throughout, most of the dishes are “modern British” – lamb, breaded chicken, posh ploughmans and so on.

And a pleasing amount of the ingredients are either produced or prepared on the premises, for example the home-made marmalade that garnished my delicious Paddington Bear cocktail.

Likewise the tea-smoked duck-breast starter, which consists of thin strips of meat smoked on site using earl grey tea leaves. Creative and toothsome in equal measures.

Our other starter, a steaming plate of mussels in a white-wine garlic sauce, was also excellent and left us licking our fingers and wanting more, as a good appetiser should.

To the mains – my thick, chunky tuna steak was served wonderfully pink with tangy capers and olives and was very good indeed.

The fish of the day, salmon, was also a hefty slab of piscine flesh. It was slightly underdone for the size of the fillet, but was of good enough quality to still be a nice bite.

Dessert-wise, everything looked fantastic, but we settled for the naughty chocolaty sundae – an incredibly decadent helping of chocolate brownie, chocolate sauce and rich ice cream which left a big smile on my chocolatey chops.

The Foundry is good enough to be a destination in itself, regardless of the music venue next door.

However, when you take both together, for example on weekend nights when you can eat while watching the show, they become even greater than the sum of their parts.