The Old Bakery, 26-28 Burton Road, Lincoln

I've heard from several people about the Old Bakery in Lincoln: they told me it has two Michelin stars, the most amazing fusion cooking, the most stunning early-Victorian dining room, the most elaborate cheeseboard, the prettiest waitress in The East, the longest waiting list for a table outside of El Bulli ... How foodies love to exaggerate. But with endorsements like these, I had to investigate.

The weather was dismal, I missed my connection at Newark and had to pay £35 for a taxi to Lincoln, but the sight of the Old Bakery cheered me up. The first thing you see is a serious wine rack; the second is an un-Victorian Bang & Olufsen multi-CD player; the third is Alan Ritson, a very welcoming class of host; the fourth is the conservatory that he installed a year ago – even on a rainy February, light pours through glass on all sides, making the lunchers' faces glow like Giotto saints.

Built in 1837, it stopped being a bakery in 1954. The baker's daughter let it go to ruin and it was restored in the mid-1990s. Alan and his wife Lynne bought it in 2004 and converted it into a restaurant to allow their son-in-law, Ivano de Serio, to show off his cuisinal talents. We should all have such in-laws.

Mr De Serio is from Puglia, but the influence of his home country is more apparent in the wine list than the menu, which is a selection of local meat and home-grown vegetables whacked with pan-European flavours and bits of Asian exotica. This is crazily adventurous cooking by a man with a passion for strong flavours and a taste for danger.

To emphasise their reliance on local produce (I mean really local, rather than from a 100-mile radius of the kitchen) they put their suppliers' names in capitals and their photographs in the preface. The pan- roasted fresh scallops wrapped in "ALFRED ENDERBY" smoked salmon, potato jelly and pickled beetroot highlights the smoked salmon as the star of the dish, instead of the fat and juicy scallops. They combine beautifully, though the slimy potato isn't the perfect accompaniment, and the beetroot is an abomination from Hades. The pan-seared fresh tuna wrapped in pickled cucumber with wasabi ice cream and soy comfit tomatoes (no capital letters this time) was more delicately balanced, the tuna a purple tuna wedge without a trace of fishiness, given a savoury kick by the tomato, then smoothed by the ice-cream. I confess I laughed to see the "wasabi ice-cream". Must every ambitious chef try out his own version of Heston Blumenthal's taste experiments? How wrong could I be? It was fantastic, it was real ice-cream (about which Ivano is Italianately passionate) and it took the tuna to heights it had never previously dreamt of going. This was a classic sushi dish deconstructed then reinvented with boldness and flair.

Main courses were equally keen to experiment and surprise. The Sichuan-style, free-range "MR VENT OF RUSKINGTON" corn-fed chicken was a huge bowl of lime-rice noodles as fat as earthworms, through which long chicken strips, nicely seasoned in Kung Po sauce (egg whites, yellow bean curd, lime juice) slithered among some toasted cashew nuts – a brilliant bowl of Chinese comfort food on a miserable day.

The restaurant is so popular at weekends, it has a five-week waiting list. I suspect that's much to do with one dish: "PETER LUNDGREN" hay and fresh herb slow-roasted boneless Lincolnshire-bred Gloucester Old Spot baby pig. The porcine infant is handed over by local Farmer Lundgren at four months to the local butcher, who chops it up and brings it round to the Old Bakery. It's quite sublime, fat-sliced, baby-soft and melting, its flavours teased out by pancetta cream sauce and a kiss of apple and plum jam from a tiny jar. Exquisite.

One has a problem at pudding time: can you resist the cheese? The restaurant features a selection that goes on for pages: 36 British and 21 continental fromages, kept in several fridges at different temperatures. I grumbled that my favourite Cashel Blue didn't feature and, after a word with the chef, they decided that actually, yeah, they had some of that too. With some yummy strawberries (out of season but marinated in Grand Marnier and served with clotted cream and vanilla biscuits), I felt like a Roman emperor after a surfeit of banquets.

So not everything I'd heard about The Old Bakery was true. It hasn't got two Michelin stars (though it has two AA rosettes ). The fabulous back dining room isn't Victorian, it's 2007. The food isn't fusion, it's unique. The cheese list is the biggest I've ever seen. It's true about the waiting list, ditto the waitress, Melissa, who looks like Samantha Janus's more beautiful younger sister. Warmly friendly, crazily ambitious and accomplished at many levels, this is the kind of restaurant you can't wait to tell your friends about.

The Old Bakery, 26-28 Burton Road, Lincoln (01522 576057)

Food
Ambience
Service

About £80 for two, with wine

Tipping policy

"We don’t have a service charge; if customers like what we provide then they can leave a tip if they want. All tips are shared equally among kitchen and waiting staff – the owners get nothing!"