Wee Jimmies, Cowdenbeath

Absolutely not a job for a grown man.

20 years on, I can still hear her saying that. My saintly ma could be exceeding scathing about many things. I seem to recall that in the context of going to licensing boards, in which case I would suggest that a thousand or two pub, hotel and club owners might beg to differ.

But what, I wonder, would she have made of all these food scribblings? Sometimes I ponder that myself. Langoustines mashed up into a tiny tart with caviar. Tiny slivers of eel guddled about with unknown Japanese ingredients. An entire meal for which no fork and knife proved necessary.

I simply don't know. She loved theatre reviews although she hadn't set foot in one for a decade or two. She loved good food - no slouch in the kitchen herself  - but I don't recall her reading those who wrote about them.

Well, if there is anyone out there who thinks I just do the poncy stuff and never get to real places outside cities, come with me as I board a Scotrail train - one a darn sight more comfortable than when I did the commute in the 60s and 70s - to Fife. I hadn't been across the Forth Bridge (the Forth Bridge, vintage 1890) in years. Fife, as you may know, is my home county and I was heading just a couple of miles from my place of birth, alighting at Cowdenbeath.

From there it's just a short stroll to Wee Jimmies. The High Street has changed radically from the days when there were more pubs and clubs (of the working men's variety) per capita than almost anywhere else bar my town, Lochgelly. It's not what you would expect from a boozer in a place like this. There is the public bar at the front. Lunches are served in the back bar, and the function room upstairs is surprisingly swish. L and I attended the Rotary Centenary Dinner there last year, and very well done it was.

This was the return fixture with chum CB, with whom I'd lunched in Edinburgh a few months ago. I arrived first and went up to the bar. Heather is a lady who having started a task is dedicated to it. Since she was filling the fridge it would be a couple of minutes before she would recognise my presence. But then she poured me a pint and it was clear we were going to get on just fine.

The best pubs are family run. Brother and sister Gary and Linda Roy are now at the helm, their mum June Matthys having done the previous shift - a mere 40 years. It's been called Wee Jimmies all the time I've known it, named for one James Binning. I had incorrectly thought he was a previous owner. In fact he was a regular, and an early sponsor of the mighty Blue Brazil, AKA Cowdenbeath Football Club.

In the recent past I've written warmly of retro food. But something, I think, can only be classed as retro if it's gone away and come back. Tom's top tip: if you're selling pub food in central Fife, never, ever take steak pie and fish and chips off your menu. These are two dishes which are excellent indicators of the quality of a pub kitchen.

As is soup. CB enjoyed the lentil, home made of course. Anyone who can make a good pan of lentil soup is OK in my book. Prawn cocktail is a classic retro dish (but not here, obviously, for reasons given above.) It was exactly as I remembered it from the 1960s, except the Marie Rose was pleasant and not based on a sharp salad cream. A dinky glass bowl, shredded lettuce and the cocktail. Plus bread. And, wait for it, yours for £4.90!

CB's salad had the sort of salady things you would expect in a pub, topped with a large slab of decent looking ham. I meantime had gone for an examination piece, Scotland's national dish, the steak pie. It came with not one, not two, but three veg, and that's before you get to the tatties. Chips please. And very good they were too, piping hot, straight from the fryer. And the steak pie was great. Purists would say a pie should have a top and bottom crust. I don't, as the whole thing goes soggy. This had the crust atop a steaming bowl of meat and gravy which was neither too thick nor too thin.

Rather better than the specimen CB enjoyed in Edinburgh last time out. Should I warn you that it's the most expensive item on the menu? No - I think you can manage to stump up the necessary £12.95.

Himself managed a dessert. I have no idea how, especially when it arrived in one of those giant knickerbocker glory type glasses for which he did, indeed, need a lang spin*. And I have absolutely no idea how they do it at these prices. Much more enjoyable than many a meal I've had at three times the cost. I don't think even ma could have found much fault.

*Fifers have an entirely unjustified reputation for being mean, epitomised in the phrase, it taks a lang spin (long spoon) tae sup wi' a Fifer