On the 15th August in 1998, at the young age of 22, I married my long suffering husband Paul Nichols. It was the opening day of the football season and Spurs lost to Wimbledon, so not the best of starts!!

That said, 21-years later, we are still together. We don’t bother with anniversary cards anymore, instead we try and find a nice restaurant and enjoy a nice bottle of red to go with it. This year, Paul’s sister Donna got us a Virgin Experience for Christmas which was a 3-course dinner with Prosecco at Hawkyns restaurant by twice Michelin starred chef Atul Kochhar. We decided that sounded like a pretty good place to celebrate our anniversary.

I did a bit of google research on the restaurant and found out that it is located within The Crown Coaching Inn in Amersham, which fortuitously also has accommodation. A quick look on Booking.com and I reserved us a Deluxe Room in the Bailey annexe, which is just across the courtyard from the restaurant and bar.

We arrived at about 4.30pm and checked in at the reception which is located in the restaurant, and headed up to our room. The room was quite spacious, nice and bright and in our case came complete with a very friendly caterpillar on the window blinds. Once he was safely deposited back outside we unpacked and headed out the door.

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Despite the fact I was born and bred in Buckinghamshire, I don’t recall having been to Amersham before. It’s a pretty market town with lots of four wheel drives parked all over the place and some very posh shops on the high street. We had a quick stop in a local pub called The Elephant and Castle , a standard pint of lager for Paul and a Cider for me, then headed back to the room for a glass of fizz before dinner.

Our table was booked for 8pm so we headed down at 7.30pm for a pre dinner drink at the bar. This wasn’t the greatest introduction to the place as there was only one poor man behind the bar serving. He was desperately trying to make cocktails and pour drinks for guests in the bar and for the diners in the main restaurant at the same time. We ordered our drinks, took a seat, and 20 minutes later the drinks arrived. By that time we needed to head into the restaurant for our meal. Not the bar mans fault, it just needed more people.

We were shown straight to our table and handed over the experience voucher. You don’t get to order from the full Ala Carte menu with the voucher, you get a set 3-course menu with a number of choices of starter, main and dessert. They quickly gave us our glass of Prosecco each, which was included in the voucher and we ordered a bottle of Argentinian Malbec priced at £40 to go with dinner. The only other Malbec on the list was £90 which seemed a tad excessive! The sommelier smelt the cork as soon as he opened the bottle which is good to see and reassuring that they know what they are doing.

There were Poppadoms waiting on the table with some lovely Mango Chutney and a spicy tomato based dip. The waiter also gave us an amuse bouche which was a really light spicy sponge with a savoury chutney on top, very nice indeed.

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For starter Paul had the Makali Fry, Crisp-Fried Squid Rings with Chilli and Passion Fruit Chutney and I had the Samosa Chaat, Crispy Wheat Parcel of Spiced Potato with Sweet Yoghurt &Tamarind Chutney. I must admit the Samosa was a bit of a surprise visually, it was covered in green chutney and looked more like a dessert, but it was absolutely delicious. We made short work of both.

For the main Paul went for the Hyderabadi Dum Biryani, Spiced Basmati Rice with Diced Lamb, Cucumber Raita and I went for the Murgh Makhani Classic Chicken Tikka in Creamy Tomato Sauce. We also ordered a bread basket with Nann and Roti and Dhingri Matar Button Mushrooms with Garden Peas &Spices.

My Makhani came with some rice and was full of flavour, but it was a little bit spicy for my taste. It built up to the point I had to drink a lot of water and couldn’t manage to eat loads of it. Paul loved his lamb dish, I dipped in and tried some much to his annoyance, and the lamb was so tender and delicious and far less spicy than mine! The side of mushrooms turned out to be a tasty, spicy little gem albeit a bit pricey at £5!

Despite both being ‘full as an egg’, our friend Helen’s favourite saying, we still decided to order dessert as it was included in the set menu. I went for the Masaledar Ananas Tandoor Grilled Pineapple with Coconut Sorbet and Paul choose Raspbrry Bhapa Doi Steamed Yoghurt Cheese Cake with Raspberry. Paul rarely has a non liquid dessert, but he loved his. I just love desserts and mine was light and tasty and because it was pineapple it was one of my 5 a day right?!

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All in all the service was good, the food was full of flavour and colour and we had a very nice evening. I would like to go back at some point and sample the full Ala carte menu.

I can’t really comment on value as ours was a present, so we only paid for the wine. But going on the price of the sides, which were extra, I imagine it’s not cheap. One for special occasions and not for a standard Friday night Ruby Murray!