8-10 St Andrew's Hill, Norwich (01603 767321). Meal for two, including wine and service: £70 (lunch), £100 (dinner)

If there is an opposite to the laminated, wipe-clean, completely-fixed, if-you-ask-for-something-not-listed-we'll-give-you-a-slap menu, it has to be the very first dish offered at lunchtime by Bishop's in Norwich. Forget soup of the week. Forget soup of the day. Bishop's has Soup of the Moment. With that one word, the universe shatters into a multiplicity of culinary possibilities, the soup option altering with the very sweep of the second hand: one moment parsnip, the next celeriac, here an oyster and newborn kitten chowder, there a broth made from leftover cheesecake. At the moment we asked, a little after 12.45pm on a Tuesday, it was asparagus, which was exactly as it should be at the moment in which we were eating, and many other moments besides.

Call me cynical, but I suspect it was still asparagus just before 12.55pm and a little after 1.10pm as well. See where our demanding foodie culture gets us? The imperative for spontaneity, for responsiveness to ingredients, ends up with a menu issuing false promises. Soup of the day will do me, as indeed will the simple word soup, if it's a really good one. Enough. Because aside from the silliness of that one menu listing – I demand that I never see it ever again, anywhere, and if I do there will be hell to pay – Bishop's is a rather lovely little place; a middle-class fantasy of what a nice, unassuming, reliable restaurant should be. The food is not wildly adventurous. It's so much better than that. It's the sort of thing home cooks with high opinions of themselves think they can pull off but never can. It's food that doesn't get in the way.

Bishop's, which occupies a tight burrow of a townhouse, is overseen by Alex Tranquillo, a chipper Italian who used to do complicated things as a head waiter at the old pre-Ramsay Savoy Grill in London and now does simple things here. At the front is the bar, where they take their wines seriously, though not in a po-faced manner. Wines by the glass appear to change with the menu, and Tranquillo is quick with suggestions in a way that suggests he actually gives a toss. At the back is the tiny dining room hung with far too many oversized crystal chandeliers, as if mocking its own pretensions. There is space for about 20 people, and on an early weekday lunchtime it was full of people who looked like they knew they were on to a good thing. And so to the food: £17.50 for three courses at lunch, rising to £28.95 for the same at dinner, where the menu is longer and the dishes a little more complex. What matters is that the fundamentals are done right: that a smoked ham hock terrine has a salty savoury jelly, a proper spiky piccalilli and still warm toast; that grilled asparagus comes with a poached egg, the yolk of which runs languorously.

Slices of Norfolk lamb are served the right shade of knicker pink; the butter fondant potatoes, sharply cut into multilayered diamonds, taste bad for you in a good way. A meaty jus is properly reduced but only unto that point when it could coat the meat properly rather than varnish a table. The only quibble is that the samphire with a seared fillet of sea trout has been overcooked, robbing it of colour and bite. We finish with a baked apple which, gloriously, is far more about the accompanying ponds of toffee sauce than the fruit, and a chocolate brownie that does what all good chocolate brownies should. It makes you feel indulged, fed and cared for.

For a long time when people talked about restaurants in Norwich, they discussed a place called Adlard's, a local landmark where chef David Adlard fought the good fight. He has gone from the city now (though he runs a small hotel at West Somerton in Norfolk, and a rather interesting-looking cookery school at the Walpole Arms in Itteringham). I am willing to bet that those of you outside of Norwich will not have heard of Bishop's. This, it seems to me, is a healthy thing. Britain can only properly lay claim to having a blossoming food culture when it is full of good restaurants you haven't heard of rather than scattered with a few good restaurants you have. And good doesn't always have to mean exotic and sodden with flourish and gush. It can just mean the simplest things done well and with proper attention to detail. All of which describes Bishop's perfectly.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place