Village voice: A little restaurant with big ideas

Dexters, Market Place, Deddington, Oxfordshire (01869-338813). Open Tue-Sat for lunch, 11am-3.30pm, and dinner, 7-10.30pm. Major credit cards except Diner's. Vegetarian meals. Set-price two-course lunch pounds 7.50, three-course pounds 10, a la carte lunch and dinner, including drink, about pounds 3

Dexters is a small restaurant in Deddington, Oxfordshire, whose owner believes in long press releases. In his opus, press agent Jamie Dexter Harrison quotes chef Jamie Dexter Harrison and proprietor Jamie Dexter Harrison on the healthful, delicious food prepared in hygienic conditions in a charming dining room in a scenic village. It is revealed that the MP for Banbury is a fan of this one-and-a-half-year-old restaurant, and that Dexters stages regular gourmet evenings. It is a happy coincidence, reveals Mr Harrison, that the restaurant is called Dexters, and that Dexter is his middle name. A special page is dedicated to the announcement that the artwork on display in Dexters is supplied by the Deddington Art Club. As Mr Harrison quotes himself explaining: "By displaying paintings by local artists we are able to provide something to delight the eye as well as the palate!" On actually visiting Dexters, I myself did not eat the paintings, but they looked nice - and the food was good, too.

Mr Harrison describes himself repeatedly in his long document as a "young chef". Having caught a glimpse of him, I can confirm that he looks young enough to be asked for ID in an off-licence. His attempt to hype Dexters has a sort of goofy, youthful glee, but it manages to get itself all wrong. The charm of Dexters - and this charm is considerable - boils down to its owner's optimistic confidence in the good life: the potent allure of simple things done nicely. When Mr Harrison burbles on about his master plan, it is as if there has been no recession, no wave of little country restaurants going bust. It is as if Jamie Dexter Harrison, after three short jobs in country kitchens, had invented the cottage restaurant.

Dexters is a smallish place set in a handsome market square that only wants a Tesco, three building society branches and a video shop to zap it out of an idealised, timeless Britain into the modern world. There is a pleasing selection of shops, including a traditional butcher's selling fresh eggs and organic bacon. Deddington feels affluent - no, make that rich - probably in part because its residents do not fritter their money away in restaurants. To lure in the tweedy, parsimonious locals, Mr Harrison has cleverly joined the Financial Times restaurant scheme and laid on a pounds 7.50 set-price lunch. Eat a blow-out lunch from the carte, drink wine and coffee, and you would end up spending more like pounds 20.

The room is attractive: yellow walls, blue candles, white napery, and some paintings of nudes from the Deddington Art Club that could make a 180-pound woman feel slim. The menu is short, and its four to five starters, same number of mains, three puds and cheese read like a greatest hits compilation of the last several editions of the Good Food Guide. There is goats' cheese and roast pepper salad; crab cakes with salsa; open ravioli of chicken livers; grilled swordfish steak with noodles, spring onion and soy; and so on. Jamie Dexter Harrison clearly admires an older generation of chefs who popularised this food, particularly Alastair Little, Simon Hopkinson and Shaun Hill.

At its worst, the cooking is capable; at its best, it is very good. Crab cakes served as a starter came with a tomato salsa: both were fine, but the crust of the cakes was not particularly crisp, the flavour of the crab mix not quite truly crab-like. The salsa with tomato and coriander was good, but needed invigorating with lime. A goats' cheese salad was excellent: the cheese hot and melting to bring up the perfume of the peppers, and served with cooling, well-dressed salad leaves.

A "Mediterranean vegetable tart" was a fairly blank mix of onion and various veg set about on a disc of puff pastry that was half drowned in a big pool of what tasted like beurre blanc. This was dull, rich and about as Mediterranean in style as strudel. By contrast, roast duck legs served on beautifully seasoned mash with roast red onions and a well-made red wine sauce was just right. Crisp skin, rich meat, fluffy mash, silky sauce, melting onions: the best of winter ballast.

Elizabeth David's recipe for gateau au chocolat et aux amandes has come a long way to become "St-Emilion au chocolat", a flourless chocolate cake topped with crumbled amaretti. At Dexters the texture is a bit gelatinous, but the flavour is all there and it is utterly delicious. Coffee is fine - and there is a perfectly good wine list that only needs more by the glass to be accessible at lunch time.

The manager, Leigh Gooding, runs the place with immaculate manners, cheer and something rather rare: an honest brand of suave. All Dexters needs now is customers to pile in, stress out the kitchen and put lines of experience on the face of the dreamy young owner. And pile in they should: not only is the food good, but the future of village shops and restaurants lies in the dedication to quality and enterprising zeal of the Jamie Dexter Harrisons of this world