Old Hunstanton, Norfolk (01485 532 122). Meal for two, including wine and service: £160

I thought long and hard before booking a table at the Neptune Inn at Old Hunstanton, though not perhaps for as long as the owners, Kevin and Jacki Mangeolles, might have liked. A decade ago I reviewed Kevin's cooking at the George Hotel on the Isle of Wight. The review wasn't pretty: a dead, windowless room with all the atmosphere of an undertaker's down on its luck, in which was served highly ambitious, derivative food full of technique but less encumbered with pleasure. I ruined their Sunday morning. Mind you they hadn't done much for my evening either so perhaps it was quits.

Now they run a small restaurant with rooms on the expensive bit of the north Norfolk coast just within reach of people from London with very deep pockets. They need them; we'll come back to that. It's a sweet lump of red-brick Victoriana with sash windows. I do like windows. They let in the light; allow you to see the understated tastefulness of the tidy bare floorboards, the white-painted, wood-slatted walls, the clean lines of it all.

This is a relaxed restaurant serving serious food. I would like to be able to rave, because that would make a better story. I can't… not quite. The cooking isn't universally the stuff of prose poems. But I can say that all the posturing of a decade ago has gone and there are a lot of great things here. Breads are soft and warm and light and, most importantly, a perfect vehicle for daffodil-yellow salted butter. There are crisp-shelled cheese gougères which puff warm air as you bite in.

A red-pepper gazpacho with a tiny scoop of avocado sorbet, served as a taster, is a Mighty Mouse of a dish that kicks you hard in the shins, in a good way. There is a pleasing bit of garlicky fire after the sweetness of the red pepper has subsided. A rabbit starter is a complicated plateful: there are warmed discs of a rillette, pieces of loin and tiny cubes of big, piggy chorizo. There's a lot of fiddly knife work here to good purpose. Equally, there is huge attention to detail in a main course of rose veal, not just in the deep-pink bits of fillet the shade of a baby's cheek, and in crisp-crumbed potato and veal croquettes. A little deep frying never goes amiss at this level. There's a soft carrot purée and a terrific meaty jus that has us chasing the last dribbles round the plate with the remaining crumbs of bread.

It's just a shame that not everything quite hits home. Asparagus with lumps of an odd sweetcorn custard and a breaded deep-fried egg, the yolk over-cooked so it doesn't run, is strange with too many unfortunate floppy textures. It made me wish for a frothy hollandaise. A piece of turbot is expertly cooked, and a broccoli purée grants that tedious vegetable a moment's nobility, but the advertised chicken wings are rock hard bits of something unidentifiable.

Desserts are more reliable. We enjoy a log of a Horlicks parfait which I'd almost call witty if I didn't hate that sort of language. A very light lemongrass sorbet and some prime raspberries cut through the maltiness. Cubes of milk chocolate and coconut mousse with fragments of caramel like shards of glass are very satisfying indeed. With coffee they serve sugar-and-cinnamon-dusted churros with a big well of hot chocolate sauce.

So it's a meal with a few ups and downs. The problem is price. It's very much a case of Ouch! And Oh My! We're talking just shy of £14 a starter, nearly £27 a main course, and £9.50 a dessert. They might as well be done with it and offer a fixed price menu at £50 and hope nobody notices. Even in smarty-pants Old Hunstanton it looks absurdly demanding. (Though the wine list is less asphyxiating.) Then again, maybe they've come up with a business model that works for them. The dining room was full, and that was with just 14 diners. Perhaps their pricing regime allows them to do the thing they love to the smallest number of covers they can manage, requiring them to find only a few punters a night. If that's the case then I suppose I should say good luck to them. But I must admit, I was thankful I was spending someone else's money.

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