Bracing Scarborough is the seaside of innocent memory, with sticks of rock, pints of prawns, the Futurama Funhouse and Winking Willy's chippie. Scarborough is decidedly unfashionable, and right charming for it. The resort is also home to Giorgio Alessio, an unreconstructed food hero. He is 46, crackling with energy, neck like a bull, hair curly like Astrakhan wool, arms like Popeye, rolls his eyes and rolls his Rs. Giorgio's conversation is seasoned with the cadences of his native Piedmont and the blummin' flat vowels of his adopted Yorkshire.
He came to England to learn the lingo, ending up in love and in Scarborough where for 24 years he's been championing local, seasonal foods. We have to 'urry to the quay because crab man's coming in. "The best catch off the boats was sold straight to the French or the Spanish for pennies. Locals didn't want it." He shakes his head.
Giorgio wanted to put stuff like Scarborough woof and velvet crabs on the menu at Lanterna, his trattoria, but first had to buy a trader's licence from the harbourmaster - small-time restaurateurs buy from wholesalers, and don't turn up at the crack looking for fresh fish. Now, on the granite quay there's salty backchat with Paul, just in from the Bay. Paul smiles like he's testing his lips and says he couldn't believe his luck with this volatile Italian willing to pay good money for tiddly velvet crabs. But George here, well, he's getting everyone to champion local fish.
Paul hauls a big bucket of small crabs, brown as mud and soft as velvet, and a basket with two fat snapping blue lobsters. A burly bloke called Bob the Smoke shouts that "she's all but dun". "She," Giorgio explains, is a massive Scarborough woof (catfish) he's having smoked. "She's bloody lovely over local black pudding," our hero expresses. This is Giorgio's forte: taking the best of Scarborough produce, adding expert enthusiasm and marrying it to Piedmont techniques and ingredients.
Lanterna is a small family trat with family prices - and very special local food with a Piedmontese accent. Giorgio cooks up a dozen crabs, the briny sweet white meat is then run through his sensational bitey own-made pasta. Lanterna's fruit, veg, fish, meat and game are all local: the rest he imports monthly from Italy. As well as truffles, oils, hams and cheeses, he also brings in his own wines. With dinner, we have a cool bottle of Arneis white from the Langhe, easily worth £16.50 of anyone's money. That, the pasta and a sparkly white baby halibut roasted with olive oil, make a sublime late spring seaside meal. With its retro brown-on-brown decor and signed snaps of Mike and Bernie Winters, Lanterna, like Scarborough, is decidedly unfashionable, yet Giorgio Alessio's food is unconsciously stylish. It is right on the button - and right champion.
Lanterna, 33 Queen Street, Scarborough (01723 363616, lanterna-ristorante.co.uk). Giorgio's book White Truffle Yorkshire Pudding is available from the site at £12.95 plus £1.55p&p. Fares from London King's Cross to York start from £19 one-way on GNER (gner.co.uk, 08457225225). Transpennine Express (tpexpress.co.uk) takes 25 minutes to Scarborough.
