AMBIENCE counts for a lot when you are out for a meal, but fantastic food is worth so much more.

It was a cold, wintry Saturday night when my friend Suzanne and me visited Cello Caf Bar on Gillygate and the ambience could not have been better.

I have been eager to try Cello, a contemporary wine bar, for a while and had the perfect opportunity when Suzanne, an friend from my university days, came to visit.

Sitting on bustling Gillygate, a mere stroll from Bootham Bar and the Minster, the business is in pole position to benefit from passing custom and the tourist trade.

Outside, the building is unprepossessing and the flight of steps up to the entrance would pose a difficulty for customers with mobility problems.

Inside, the warm glow of the open fire was inviting and the smell of pizzas cooking whetted our appetite and had us reaching for the menu.

In the bar, we ordered a bottle of Italian red Barolo Le Terre for £15, which was the most expensive on the wine list. It had plenty of ripe fruit flavours and a hint of oak. Other wines started from £11.

Open from noon-11pm every day except Sunday, Cello offers a range of paninis and melts, pizzas, wraps, fajitas and light meals as well as grills.

Browsing the menu, we came a bit unstuck trying to locate the appetisers. Having run down the choices on pages one and two we flipped over to find the "little extras" we were looking for on the back.

Once found, we selected skewers of ginger and lemongrass chicken (£3.50) and a bowl of nachos with dips of guacamole and salsa (£5.50), but we could just as easily have chosen marinated stuffed olives, sliced beef tomato and feta or skewers of king prawns or pork satay (from £1.50-£2).

The chicken pieces were tender and succulent with a hint of lemon that made them nice and zingy while the nachos and dips were enough to tide us over until our main courses.

Suzanne was eager to sample the pizza and opted for the pepperoni (£5.50) which came with double toppings of mozzarella cheese and pepperoni.

The menu boasted that the 10-inch, thin-based pizzas were all freshly made on the premises. Our pepperoni one - which I decided to taste for review purposes - was a bit ordinary. While the cheese was nicely melted and the base was floury and light, the pepperoni was a little overdone and both of us were convinced the cheese seemed more like cheddar than the promised mozzarella.

I plumped for the lamb grill (£8). It was diced and served on two skewers and had been marinated in a mouth-watering smoked barbecue sauce. It came with rice, side salad, chilli sauce and minted yoghurt. The rice was flavoured with tomato and spices and the salad was of crisp iceberg lettuce lightly drizzled with a mustard dressing. All were consumed all too quickly and left me wanting more because the portions were not overly generous.

Both of us were still hungry and casting around for the dessert menu the waitress furnished us with the two options - a chocolate hankie panky cake and a strawberry cheesecake at £1.90 a portion.

When they arrived the chocolate pudding was rich and filling, while the strawberry one was satisfactory, but nothing more. Neither were particularly well defrosted.

To finish, we unwound with a warming liqueur coffee (£3.60), rum for me, Baileys' for Suzanne.

Our bill came to £48.50.

My verdict on Cello is for it to keep trying. It has the right component parts - warm ambience, friendly service and value-priced food - but, like the menu, they weren't quite in the right order.

Haydn visited Cello on Saturday, December 3, 2005

Cello Cafe Bar, 19, Gillygate, York. Tel: 01904 633274

Food: so-so

Service: swift

Value: great

Ambience: warm

Disabled access: No

Updated: 16:31 Friday, December 09, 2005