IT’S obvious to us from the moment we walk in the door that the North Port is a popular restaurant. Perth, a small county town, on a Wednesday lunchtime, yet it’s bristling with customers. We can instantly see why. With its dark wood coffered ceilings and a winding iron staircase to the upper level, it might be du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, once the wreckers were kicked out and benign new management had taken over. It oozes period charm and is patently lovingly curated. There’s a hum of satisfaction from its clientele.

The food, as it turns out, is in a similar vein. "All of our ingredients have been carefully selected and are supplied by small, local growers, breeders, suppliers and foragers" we’re assured, and this doesn’t turn out to be fashionable posturing either. Every ingredient on each plate is thoughtful: intelligently sourced, handled with care and effort, eschewing pointless fussing. We eat mainly from the good value lunch/pre-theatre menu, which isn’t a second division, going-through-the-motions proposition. It’s alive with interest and pleasing surprises.

We’re given lots of home-baked bread, enticing in itself with its salty-soft crumb and biscuity crust, along with a smooth celeriac dip, and butter that’s been beaten with crushed juniper berries – a terrific combination. We find it hard to stop and order more; we’re not subsequently charged for it. A starter featuring Arbroath Smokie looks bright, light and beautiful enough to make the cover of a Scandinavian food magazine. The fish, which still has a pre-refrigeration pearly softness, sits on pools of magenta beetroot purée and herb oil, in a tumble of candy-stripe beetroot discs and balls of golden beetroot. Blobs of seaweed mayo provide emollience, fronds of dill bring their distinctive personality to an already very fine dish. And there’s more of this clean, fresh, palate-priming brightness from a relatively rudimentary-sounding starter of Clava cheese with pear, celery, and walnut, which turns out to be a voluptuous quenelle of the light, creamy cheese reclining on silky-soft slices of chargrilled pears, amidst tangles of long, fine, celery ribbons and crushed nuts.

Coley, its skin fried crisp, its flesh plump and juicy, defies its reputation as an inferior fish. Under it sits a gorgeously buttery potato rosti and tender purple sprouting broccoli that has the whiff of the wok to it, which accentuates its sappy, brassica flavour. Flaked almonds, tasting as if they’ve just been fried in butter, add that final oily, textural element that rounds off the dish.

I’m quite amazed by the vegetarian main course. Who knew that celeriac could be quite so interesting? The ugly vegetable, transformed into dark-roasted batons alongside melting roast apple, served with sapid barley grains that are coated in herby oil and crushed, toasted hazelnuts, is a revelation. The best bit is the celeriac skin, which has been dried to a crisp, giving it a deeply savoury umami character fit to give truffle a run for its money.

With desserts, we discover that North Port has a very sound set of pastry skills. Mousse is so often dull, but here’s one that captures the essence of ripe, fragrant pears. It’s teamed up with a moist, eggy Financier-type almond sponge, a brittle flaked almond tuile, and crystals of sharp, refreshing sorrel sorbet. It’s a knockout, no excessive heaviness, just elements that are individually impressive put together to create a clever collective synergy. Praline parfait, meanwhile, is precisely the paragon of good taste and restraint that makes your average sticky toffee pudding job seem as crude as sucking condensed milk neat from the can. Quenelles of mousse avoid the praline trap of excessive sweetness, instead the toasty roasted hazelnut presence is to the fore. They come with sticky blobs of a rich, pleasing, mouth-filling browned butter and white chocolate confection, paper-thin wafers, and caramel shards. So many mutually enhancing elements, all at a perfect ambient temperature that allows you to revel in their subtle praline, butterscotch, and nut notes.

The marvel is that North Port shows no pretension, given its cooking level. It just seems content to be a pleasant restaurant with a kitchen team that can really cook.

North Port, 8 North Street, Perth 01738 580867,

Lunch £13.95-£40 Dinner £22-£40

Food rating 10/10