VICTORIA Delaney bemoaned the dearth of roles beyond mothers and wives she has found herself playing on the Yorkshire stage.

Her solution was to write her debut play, a 70-minute comedy with the central character of bistro owner Antonia Belmont, who has run the Bistro Belle for seven years as her fifth venture in the restaurant business.

She likes a drink, and then another, which may make her indiscreet, but she is dynamic, decisive, demanding, a leader who insists her staff get on, and if she says a sudden order for 36 quails' eggs must arrive at the drop of her dapper hat, then arrive they must, no matter what the hour of the night.

Antonia, independent, driven and a little dangerous at the smart southern edges, is exactly the kind of woman Delaney wants to pla, and when Matthew Wignall's new-writing hub, Off The Rock Productions, took up the play and asked Alison Young to direct it, she duly cast Delaney. Phew! Well, she would do that, wouldn't she, but it is the right decision.

Since moving to York, Victoria has been the queen of the scene, whether working with Hedgepig Theatre, Upstart Theatre Company,Well-fangled Theatre or the York Shakespeare Project, often in the rather more interesting wife and mother roles, it must be said.

Young casts herself as plain-speaking Yorkshire waitress Sarah, who can't stand the heat of chef Dave's clumsy advances and cheesy chat-up lines in the kitchen. One of those bandana-wearing chefs whose galley kitchen is his kingdom, Dave (Teej Jackson) nevertheless has been burnt by his ex-wife, who is playing harder and harder ball over access to their son Keanu (she was a Matrix fan), and tonight he must collect Keanu by ten o'clock. He's fretting, worse than Scarborough on a murky morning.

Who should walk in after last orders demanding obsequious service, off-piste dishes of her choice and champagne by the bucketload but Jamie Richards (Clancy McMullan). You know, that Jamie Richards, ghastly gastronomic food critic for the broadsheets. She wants to be awkward; Antonia wants a good review but a good drink more; Sarah is only just holding everything in check and Dave is reaching boiling point.

Delaney has the inside track on fine cuisine from her grandparents running coastal restaurants for many years and her comedy aspires to the fractious farce of Fawlty Towers in its collisions between owner, staff and customer, played out on Paul Mason's end-on set design.

It is not as witty as John Cleese and Connie Booth's hotel horror show, how could it be, but Delaney reveals a facility for constructing scenes with momentum; crunchy, snappy dialogue; an unexpected twist and a neat ending; and all the performances have just the right amount of comic broadness without making a meal of it. Delaney has swagger, McMullan, the steel of a dagger, and the interplay of Young and Jackson blossoms, while Alexander King's sound design complements the swings of mood.

For her starter, new playwright Delaney spins her play on plates with confidence, while revealing a relish for giving women on stage something to chew on not usually to be found on the theatre menu.

Fine Dining, Off The Rock Productions, Upstage Centre Theatre, 41 Monkgate, York, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm; extra sitting at 2.30pm tomorrow. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/offtherockproductions