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LOCAL restaurants are the ones that suf- fer most in the food columns. The charm of the trat round the corner, the friendly neighbourhood joint, can pall once the joy of proximity is taken away. The further you travel for dinner, the more you expect from it. If this is a problem in London, it is even more pronounced outside it. What pleases the locals in ill-served cities and villages can seem unprepossessing to spoilt metropolitan diners, and to pick out one such place can bring with it an unwelcome burden of expectation.

The Armless Dragon in Cardiff is a case in point. To start with, to say it is one of the best restaurants in Wales is meagre praise, for this is not a country which boasts a fine culinary tradition. But it is probably a better example of good local cooking than you'd find in many places elsewhere. It isn't one of those off-the- beaten-track gastronomic palaces, hidden discreetly behind the working men's club, or an urban dream of rural plenty offering quaint unspoilt Gaelicness; but the food is fresh and robustly cooked and the atmo- sphere calm and friendly. And it pleases the locals. Make a vast detour and you might feel disappointed, but come for din- ner if you live or are staying nearby and the prospect will please.

One of its chief virtues is its lack of pre- tension. Out of London, restaurants are dedicated to the diner with an eye for a treat and restaurateurs do their best to oblige with too much, frill and not enough restraint. Here, the element of back-street café remains. They cook what they know, not what they've read.

After the severely designed interiors of our more celebrated restaurants, the Arm- less Dragon's uncoritrived decor has a charm of its own. Tables are simply laid and the walls, on which are suspended glass bowls of light seemingly draped with red napkins, arc hung with a clutter of oil `They've really overstepped the mark this time.'

paintingst At the lower end, there are items of schoOlrOom art which can be baffling. One amateurish daub is of a traffic cone, for example, another of a red metallic soda siphon. But as you come in, there is the finest painting seen in any restaurant anywhere — and tjiat includes the illustri-

ous collection in the Ivy: a large double portrait of a man and woman in a train, he immersed in his paper, she in her lonely isolation, by a local artist and regular cus- tomer, Harry Holland. I would kill to have that painting.

This is not a particularly `Welsh' restau- rant. The chef, Deborah Coleman, is, after all, Scottish, but there are concessions to

the locality, such as laverballs with mush- rooms. I have to admit to giving these a

miss. I have always failed to appreciate the peculiar charm of laverbread and recog- nise, therefore, that it is safer not to brave the presumption of comment. Other starters have their culinary roots in a lively eclecticism. The minced beef and chilli salad, from a rotating repertoire of spe- cials, was redolent of Thai food: aromatic and nutty with sesame and ground roasted

rice and hot with spring onion. chilli and a sinus-clearingly astringent dressing, this is a starter to buck the appetite.

Fish is one of the restaurant's speciali- ties, and the brill is firm-fleshed and boun- cily fresh. The Celtic casserole is a

restaurateur's interpretation of a good local stalwart, caul: a stew of chicken leg,

leek, mutton and home-made, bready and coarsely minced sausage in a pulse-grainy lamb broth. The potatoes were, as they always seem to be in Wales, sweet and dense and in welcome profusion.

Puddings pleased less. The rum and raspberry trifle was gloopy and the cashew paste to accompany the honey-fragrant hunza apricots brought Polyfilla to mind, but the local (loosely) Pencarreg cheese is excellent. A bottle of Rioja will set you back £9.10 and Muscadet £8.90. And the whole, when one is used to dizzying Lon- don prices, seems absurdly cheap. Dinner for two, even after the tip, is unlikely to nudge the £50 mark. This is not a superb restaurant, but it satisfies.

The Armless Dragon, 97-99 Wyvern Road, Cardiff. fel 0222 382357. Closed Sat lunch, Sun lunch and all day Mon.

Nigella Lawson