When we last dined there, we were taken with the “DIY Main Dish” option which enabled you to mix and match your own combo of main, side and sauce. Although it still appears on the pub's website, we found it unavailable this time with, instead, a daily specials board and a fixed menu mostly made up of snacks. We usually plump for a main and a sweet but choice on the latter was confined to Chocolate Fondant, Apple Crumble or Cheese & Biscuits – so we went for starters. My Grilled Goat's Cheese Crute with Crusty Baguette (£5.50) comprised a sizeable round of cheese sitting on hard toast plus lettuce and a warm baguette – not a dish you could easily get wrong and this was lovely. The same applied to Jane's Salmon Fish Cake Thai Style (£6) – well-proportioned and good quality, tasty finish plus a hot sauce. For the main I selected Beef in Ale with Mash Potatoes (£8.50). This was essentially a stew with good lean meat in a thick beery gravy along with root vegetables and mushrooms, topped with plain mash. It was simple and delicious though a little more meat wouldn't have gone amiss.

Jane's dish, New York Chicken, was a bit more complex, featuring a good-sized chicken breast topped with cheese, bacon and a wholegrain mustard sauce, accompanied by crispy chips and a decent salad. The chicken was suitably succulent and the plateful ample.

A jolly good meal then, nothing fancy but well presented and with quality ingredients. The choice (five starters, six mains and aforementioned sweets) was somewhat restricted though there were fish, steak and veggie options additional to what we had. Service was quick and friendly.

On the beer front, the Green Man is free of tie and the three or four ales show a welcome bias to East Anglia. Our choice was between Woodforde's Wherry and Nelson's Revenge and Church End Bottoms Up. My pint of the last was excellent but Jane's Wherry was somewhat tired.

The pub itself has an L-shaped interior with the bar area straight ahead from the front door and the dining room to the left The décor is unfussy (some might say spartan) and both rooms have plain, mostly large, tables and high backed chairs. The dining room had a welcome log fire burning whilst a high shelf carries lots of empty champagne bottles, each with a label commemorating the event for which it was drunk.

You can read more on the pub's website at www.greenmanthriplow.co.uk though, as noted, this isn't fully up to date. The pub is closed Sunday evening and all day Monday.