If you haven't time to cook but are bored with supermarket ready meals, then get your own French chef to make your supper for less than a fiver.

GET a French chef to cook your supper for less than a fiver? Easy when you know how. Le Carolo, just off the Market Place in Thirsk, is part delicatessen, part sandwich shop, part outside caterer - as well as supplier of wonderful ready meals that are a world away from mass-produced supermarket offerings.

Hardly surprising as they are devised and made by French chef Stephane Lablaine.

He's from Ardennes in northern France, came to England to improve his English and was working at Heathrow when he met his wife Alison McKibbons, a Yorkshire lass from Thirsk.

After a few years in which Stephane went back to France to do his national service, then worked in a hotel in York, and at the pub in Sutton-under-Whitstonecliffe, he decided to go it alone and set up his own outside catering business.

"By then we had two small girls and I never saw them. Working for myself I thought could see more of my family."

He started off working from home but soon the business was too big to cope.

"The kitchen was much too small, food and equipment took over the house. Our dining room was a store room. We had a freezer in the bedroom."

In August two years ago - yes, just when the tourist trade was still recovering from foot-and-mouth and was about to be hit by events of 9/11 - he opened his premises in Kirkgate, just along the road from the Herriot Centre.

"In France such a business as this is quite common, selling food and doing outside catering."

There is a sandwich bar and a delicatessen counter. But the back of the premises, clearly visible, is taken up by a large professional kitchen where Stephane and his team prepare the food for their outside catering functions, anything from picnics, dinner for four and barbecues, to a banquet for 400.

But they also prepare a regular selection of about ten dishes to be sold as ready meals. They may include classic French dishes such as bouef bourgignon, coq au vin, pork gaston gerard, as well as seafood, game, or fishcakes.

And the joy is that - unlike all those pre-packed meals - you can buy as much or as little as you wish, whether it's one delicate appetite or six greedy people. No one need go hungry and neither need you buy more than you need. You can also pretend you made it yourself.

"I think some people do that," says Stephane, "But I don't mind as long as they enjoy it."

It is, literally, a shop window for the catering business. "People can try a meal here, see if they like what we do."

It works the other way too. People who've enjoyed his food at a function have become regular customers. The shop is open until 6pm - ideal for those who want to pop in on the way home from work and buy an instant supper.

Meals range in price from £1.35 to £1.75 for 100g, with most at around £1.50. An average portion would be between 200g and 300g and if you spend more than £4 a portion you get another tinfoil container or two packed with very good pre-cooked vegetables. Easy peasy or what?

And although the chef and some of the recipes are French, much of the produce is purest Yorkshire. "I try and use the freshest, most local ingredients wherever I can. For instance, all our meat is from near Thirsk or the Dales."

And, of course, being French, there's wine to go with it. Stephane used to teach wine, so knows what he's talking about. He also has friends and relations in the Champagne region, which also helps. He has a decent and unusual selection of wines.

Along with puddings from Just Puds near Ripon, French cheeses, and handmade chocolates from Aysgarth, it's a winning combination of French and English.

And all you have to do is eat it ...

Le Carolo, 11 Kirkgate, Thirsk. (01845) 523139. www.lecarolo.com. Open Mon-Thurs 9am-6pm; Friday, Saturday 9am-6.30pm. Closed Sunday.

The telephone number for Traidcraft in last week's Shoptalk was incorrect. The correct number is 0191-491 0591. We apologise for any inconvenience.