Mosaica @ the factory, north London

Word of mouth leads Tracey MacLeod to an industrial wasteland in north London - and an unexpectedly toothsome treat in a quirkily converted chocolate factory

The Wood Green Cultural Village sounds like one of those jokes, like The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan, or Famous Belgians. But it really exists; I know, I've been there. Up towards London's North Circular, take a left at Wood Green Shopping City and there it is, in the middle of an industrial estate. Not a village as such, but a cluster of light industrial buildings, converted by Haringey Council into studios and workshops. And tucked away deep inside one of them, a restaurant, Mosaica. (To give its full name would necessitate using the @ sign, something that surely only teenage text-messagers still find sophisticated.)

I'd heard interesting things about Mosaica, via that old-fashioned PR device, word of mouth. Not just about the food, which is superior gastropub, but about the prices. "How can they charge so much when they're in an industrial estate in Zone 3?" wondered my incredulous informant.

Anyone can discover a fantastic, cheap local place. How much more intriguing to unearth a swaggeringly expensive one! Further research revealed that Mosaica was opened a couple of years ago by two chefs who'd worked in some of the capital's more demanding kitchens, including stints with Marco Pierre White and Alastair Little. I'm not sure how they ended up in Wood Green, but the locals must be very glad they did.

Because Mosaica is one of the most beguiling restaurants I've visited in a long time. The dismal approach, past a security guard and through a deserted municipal building, only serves to highlight the magic as the door swings open and you're drawn into a huge cocoon of a room, pulsing with music and laughter. The look is post-industrial quirky: pillars, whitewashed walls and exposed ducting are softened by snug corners filled with squashy sofas, mismatched junk-shop furniture and candles flickering on every table. There are arty photos, as you'd expect in the Cultural Village, and a carousel of video cassettes used for ironic decorative effect. "It's like Hoxton without the social anxiety," as one of my guests observed.

The daily-changing menu is dominated by simple, appetising dishes of the gastropub variety, many of them grill-based; even the yeasty, home-baked bread that kicked things off had earned its stripes. Of the six starters and six main courses on offer, we sampled half, without striking a dud. Good going, when you're dealing with ingredients as temperamental as grilled squid, which came generously heaped in soft, smoky folds over a pile of rocket, with half a lime for squeezing. Equally impressive was the stack of plump, grilled sardines, simply dressed with parsley and a squeeze of lemon. According to the menu, Mosaica's chicken soup is "just like mom makes it". Which would be true if mom happened to be a fine home cook, rather than someone who was handy with a tin-opener – the broth had a good, deep flavour and was brimming with chicken, carrots, vermicelli and chickpeas.

Now, about these prices. Yes, they seem quite steep, considering the location – starters go for £5-£8, while the mains are £13-£15. But when you see the size of some of the main courses, you begin to understand why. Order rib-eye steak and you get not one but three hunks of well-hung and precisely cooked beef, probably totalling some 20oz – certainly too much to be eaten in one sitting outside of a Japanese game show.

It was the fish dishes that revealed Mosaica's chefs really know what they're doing. Delicate, crisp-skinned sea bass was well partnered with a slithery tangle of chanterelles, each as big as a baby's palm, while the healthy colour and non-oily finish of the salmon indicated that the fish had had its share of exercise before it hit the grill. Accompanying vegetables were also admirable, from a light-textured mash concealing plump cloves of confit garlic, to the authentically spiced Chinese greens and rice that accompanied the salmon.

The pudding list reads as unadventurous – crème brulée, pannacotta, chocolate mousse – but each has been reinvented with an unexpected flourish. Pannacotta comes topped with a shot of hot espresso, like an inverted Gaelic coffee, while a fabulously sticky chocolate mousse was mined with crushed amaretti biscuits, in a sybaritic dish that lived up to the building's provenance as a former chocolate factory.

So, there's nothing pretentious about Mosaica's food, but it succeeds in doing simple dishes meticulously well. Service, too, goes the extra mile, thanks to a young and relaxed team who seem to have a stakeholder approach to the enterprise; in fact, they're just the kind of arty-media types who might well rent workshop space in other parts of the Cultural Village, when they're not busy trimming their goatees.

Add a short and helpfully annotated wine list of mainly European wines (sample description: "Italy; mellow") with no bottle priced over £20, and a soundtrack drawn from some fantasy jukebox (sample artists: the Kinks, Johnny Cash, Gregory Isaacs), and Mosaica is pretty close to being my ideal restaurant.

So what if the bill climbed to £120, only £25 of which was spent on drink? It's not every night you're in Wood Green, is it?

Mosaica @ the factory, The Chocolate Factory, Clarendon Road, Wood Green, London N22 (020-8889 2400)