Excellent reports have been reaching me for a couple of months concerning the revamped Magdalen Arms, in Iffley Road, and the superb quality of its food.

I can recall no bigger buzz about a new place in more than three decades of covering the city’s restaurant scene.

Having finally sampled its wares myself, I can only say that every word spoken in its praise turned out to be true.

The people behind the business are Florence Fowler, who heads a cheery team front of house, and her partner Tony Abarno, who is in charge of the kitchen. In terms of their pedigree I need only say that they used to run the Anchor & Hope in The Cut, near Waterloo, recognised as one of London’s top gastropubs, even by such notoriously hard-to-please critics as A.A. Gill and Giles Coren.

This, like the Magdalen Arms, was created from a very run-down boozer in a less than fashionable part of town. Its much-admired concentration on the best and freshest ingredients, offered in lively combinations, also characterises the cooking at The Magdalen Arms. They bake their own bread, including excellent focaccia; they make their own ice-cream; they encourage allotment holders among their customers to bring in produce in exchange for a ploughman’s lunch, a pint or two of their first-class real ale, or home-made lemonade.

A few choice items plucked from a recent menu (not the one we ate from at lunch on Sunday) gives a good idea of the taste experiences on offer. Starters included home-cured gravadlax, purple sprouting on garlic toast and goat’s curd, and deep-fried brawn and gribiche. For the main course you could have sampled braised ox-cheek and horseradish dumplings, whole crab with chips and mayonnaise, or Stinking Bishop and potato gratin pie. Among tempting puds were lemon polenta cake, prune and armagnac ice cream and Muscat caramel custard.

Our lunch was booked for somewhat late in the day, at 2pm, by which time a couple of the items we really fancied had run out. So, there was no main course of pheasant, celeriac, chestnut and bacon pie for me; and no treacle tart and cream for Olive. She was therefore drawn, as so often, to sticky toffee pudding which, with some of that home-made ice cream, was judged splendid.

To start, I had warm English octopus, little gem lettuce and aioli, a dish that famously used to figure (possibly still does) at the Anchor & Hope. Served in a bowl, with spoon, knife and fork supplied, this was a cross between a stew, a salad and a soup. The baby octopus was beautifully tender, a function of the slow cooking in liquid rather than on a grill, and there was so much of it that, with all the sliced onions and the rest, I could eat no more than half.

Generosity was noticeable, too, in my main course of roast rib of Hereford beef. Two deep-pink slices were served on a plate-size Yorkshire pudding on which were also to be found carrots, roast potatoes and a couple of excellent brussels sprouts whose dimension – shops sell such tiddlers! – would suggest an allotment provenance.

Olive, too, went for one of the roasts, slow- cooked local lamb, with buttery mashed potatoes and winter greens. This got the thumbs up, as had her starter of pea and ham soup, so thick with ingredients she could almost stand up her spoon in it.

For Rosemarie, there was a starter of thinly sliced Italian ham with a remoulade of crunchy celeriac. While this was just to her taste, she was not entirely delighted with her main course of smoked haddock with Swiss chard rarebit. While the fish was fine, the vegetable’s cheesy topping had a kick of cayenne pepper which brought tears to her eyes. She felt this ought to have been flagged up on the menu by the adjective ‘fiery’ or something similar.

Still, she was able to cool off with the very gluggable house white, while I continued with the beaujolais, which was ordered for my beef but paired very happily with the Beenleigh Blue ewe’s milk cheese from South Devon with which I finished my meal.

This, as I said, is a great place. I shall be back very soon. Next Friday, in fact . . .