The Green, Saltwood, Hythe, Kent (01303 237 800). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £50-£100

I have always associated the village of Saltwood near Hythe in Kent with a certain kind of agreeable louchness. This is because it is home to Saltwood Castle, inhabited by the late Alan Clark MP until his death in 1999, when he insisted on being buried in its grounds. Politically, Clark was to the right of Genghis Khan, and could say things that would make your bottom jaw fall so slack it seemed to have become dislocated from the rest of your skull. Referring to Africa as “bongo-bongo land” sticks in the memory. Racism aside, he did rather add to the gaiety of nations. In 1992 he retired as an MP and published his diaries, but missed the Commons so much he stood again for election in 1997.

As a candidate he could no longer write his diaries. Instead, throughout the election, I wrote them for him for this newspaper, which meant I pursued him around Kensington and Chelsea for a month. It was an eventful campaign. Halfway through, a retired judge turned up from South Africa looking to “horse whip” Clark because it transpired he’d shagged both his wife and his daughter. Clark’s birthday fell during the campaign so the Observer gave him a present – an academic treatise on the objectification of breasts, because we knew he appreciated those (breasts, not academic treatises.) The cover, featuring a dozen photographs of its subject, was the only racy thing about it. He passed the package to his long-suffering wife Jane to open. Apparently she was not amused.

I like to think Clark would have approved of Saltwood on the Green, the restaurant that not long ago opened close to the castle. As both a small and big C conservative, he might have mourned the fact that it occupies the site that was once the village general store. Then again, as the only minister ever to have been accused of being sloshed while at the dispatch box, I suspect he might have seen the benefits of being able to drink there in a way he never could when it was the local shop. There’s the modestly priced wine list, the changing roster of cocktails at £7 a pop and, best of all, the local ciders by Jake’s Orchard, flavoured with nettles or strawberries which, on a muggy summer’s day, are just the thing, in a glass so heavy with ice it’s practically frosted.

The last reminder of the shop is the magnificent piece of wooden shelving and drawers, once used by the store for everything from flour to spices to balls of string, which fills a whole wall. Otherwise it’s a pleasing whitewashed, airy space. Viewed through the prism of its lunchtime menu, it ticks all the boxes marked useful: there’s scrambled eggs and fishcakes, soup of the day and cheesecake. It’s where laydees come to natter. It’s when you start looking at the evening menu that you sense a greater ambition at work. The head chef is American Jeff Kipp, who worked at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago before coming to London to work with Gordon Ramsay and, later, at the estimable Duck and Waffle.

The clearest sign of his American roots are in the nibbles: a delicious warm cornbread with a sweet, sticky tomato jam and a curl of soft goat’s cheese; an absurdly moreish soft pretzel, with a dish of liquid Welsh rarebit topping for dredging through, and dredging through again. Elsewhere it’s clear that Kipp is most energised by the ambitious and lightly tweezered. On the one hand, a smoked fishcake is a puck of far more potato than fish, as though he’s thinking about the lunchtime bottom line rather than the end product. It feels like something he knows he has to have there and, at £7, bulking up with potato is the only way to make it work.

By contrast £9 for three good-sized scallops feels like value. They are perfectly seared and come draped with thin slices of lardo, the cured back fat of the pig, melting to translucence so you can see the sear marks beneath. There are curls of crackling to up the pig quotient, which can never be a bad thing, and thin batons of Granny Smith apple to give all that fat and caramelisation a bit of life.

From the list marked “big plates”, a title which has a whiff of “Alan Partridge at the breakfast buffet” about it, a chicken dish is quite the piece of work. Yes it’s £18, but boy do you get a lot for your money. There are thumping pieces of skinless breast from a bird that could clearly have taken you down with one punch. More impressive than the size is the fact that it tastes so deeply of chicken and is soft without feeling like cotton wool. There are small planks of smoked mushroom, bronzed cylinders of potato, and then a load more chicken that has been braised, shredded, spun through with fresh herbs and reformed into what fancy restaurants like to call a “tian” before being topped with crumbs made from crisp chicken skin. Try saying all that without taking a breath. Bring a friend.

A lamb dish – loin, a raviolo made with lamb’s liver and crisped sweetbreads all atop a salad of broad beans with pomegranate seeds – is a little less successful. The pasta used to form the ravioli is a bit heavy, and the filling dense; the sweetbreads are cut so small they have seized up a touch in the oil. It’s one of those dishes where you can see exactly what they’re getting at, without quite being able to applaud the end result.

There’s something similar in the desserts, which have been placed on the plate just so. They look as if they have been plated for Instagram rather than with the diner in mind. A rectangle of set pollen cream is merely a lightly aromatic mousse, though the accompanying nuggets of cinder toffee lift the dish. The piece of honeycomb reads nicely, however, but is a hit of sweet too far. A strawberry cheesecake is dependent on a disc of gel which is a little too much sweet and not enough fruit.

To be fair I think these criticisms are judging Saltwood on the Green by its own standards. For all its laidback chic, this is a serious kitchen keen to punch above its weight. Often it succeeds. Certainly Alan Clark would have been very happy here. Whether they would have been happy to have him is another matter entirely.

Jay’s news bites

■ For another smart bistro punching above its weight, try Digby Chick in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. At lunchtime it can do you paninis and fishcakes, because it must to survive. But come the evening it’s beef fillet with local scallops, or pistachio and sesame-crusted monkfish (digbychick.co.uk).

■ One of the most beautiful dining rooms in London may get a new operator after the Criterion Restaurant on Piccadilly Circus went into administration following a 60% rent rise which, operators said, makes the business unviable in its current location. The extraordinary gold-tiled vault of the Criterion was run by Charles Forte for many years, but more recently by a Georgian entrepreneur. In my 2010 review I declared it my worst meal of the year, even though it was only January. Fingers crossed someone with taste and skill gets control (criterionrestaurant.com).

■ If you enjoyed billiards in the cellar at the Lime Wood Hotel in Hampshire, bad luck. The table has been removed to make room for a new cookery school, HH & Co Backstage, run by Angela Hartnett and Luke Holder, who already oversee the catering at the hotel (limewoodhotel.co.uk).

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk

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• This article was amended on 7 July 2015 to update the news bites entry on the Criterion Restaurant.