Lockwoods café and restaurant, 83 North Street, Ripon, North Yorkshire

For the first three months, you're generally feeling a bit under the weather and not up to consuming anything much.

In the following weeks, as you gradually expand, your capacity for eating large helpings seems to diminish. Forget eating for two - I've found it's more like eating for half the person you once were.

That's not to mention the long list of foods that are not recommended under NHS guidelines: blue cheese, goats' cheese, cured meats, prawns, raw fish, rare steaks, coffee, alcohol? hang on, all the things I most like to eat.

Even peanut butter seems to be off-limits, for goodness sake.

All of which rather makes one lose the enthusiasm for going out to eat. After all, if you can only have a few things on the menu, you can't manage big helpings any more, and you're not really supposed to have a glass of wine to wash it all down with - where's the fun in that?

However, the husband and I found ourselves in the lovely town of Ripon the other day at about dinner time, so we decided to book ourselves a rare night out.

Lockwoods café and restaurant re-opened after a big refit in 2005.

Inside, it turned out to be a lot roomier than it looked on the outside. The décor is modern and spacious, with a long ramp up the middle making things easy for wheelchair users, some red banquette affairs for larger groups on one side, a raised area of tables on the left, and more room in the back.

The first good surprise of the evening was the menu, which not only had plenty of options for the mum-to-be, but had been carefully thought out by someone who clearly had a good idea of what people want to eat nowadays - and how much they are prepared to pay.

The food on offer was modern, yet not too off-puttingly trendy, and nothing was outrageously expensive.

Starters were around the £6 mark and included ham hock terrine with tomato chutney and grilled mackerel fillet with cucumber relish and mustard crème fraiche.

Mains included spatchcocked poussin and thai fishcakes, and the specials list had plenty of fish: lemon sole, haddock and sea bass.

What was particularly clever, though, was the inclusion on the menu of pizzas and pasta dishes priced from £7 to £9.50, for those who fancy spending a bit less for one course and a glass of wine.

The husband and I being in the mood for a blow-out, we kicked off with starters - me choosing sardines with tomato and garlic bruschetta (£5.95) and him going for blue cheese ravioli with tomato fondue (£5.50). These turned out to be decent sized portions - probably a bit too generous for me - but certainly pretty tasty. My sardines and bruschetta were delicious, while Martin's ravioli was also good - although he did say there wasn't a lot of evidence of the blue cheese.

My fish of the day (£12.50) was salmon, served with homemade chunky chips, lemon, salad and aioli. A brief moment of panic that aioli might include raw egg (banned in pregnancy) was laid to rest by our excellent serving staff, and they even remembered the query in order to warn me that Martin's béarnaise sauce with his Ribeye steak did contain the forbidden raw egg should I fancy trying it out. Impressively thoughtful.

Martin loved his steak, which came with big, thick chips, watercress salad and caramelised shallots (£15.95). I also enjoyed my salmon, which was well cooked with just the simplicity you want with a dish like this.

Already full, we should have stopped there. I was sorely tempted by everything on the pudding menu, especially the summer pudding with mint crème fraiche (£6.50), but in the end we decided to share vanilla pod ice cream with butterscotch sauce (£5.50), plus petits fours (£3.50) and coffee.

The ice cream was a giant of puddings: gorgeous, hot, sticky sweet sauce, lovely creamy ice cream.

Coffee was the final good surprise - it actually tasted like coffee, which considering we ordered decaff is always a bonus.

The whole lot - including a glass or two of wine - (yes, I did succumb to a few forbidden mouthfuls) - came to £64.05.

We came away with a feeling of contentment that you get from eating uncomplicated, good food, served without pretension in a relaxed setting.

factfile

Food:TastyService: ExcellentValue: ReasonableAmbience: RelaxedDisabled access: YESLockwoods café and restaurant: 83 North Street, Ripon, North Yorkshire, HG41DP, tel: 01765 607555Lucy and Martin visited on July 14.