Since La Cucina opened in St Clements exactly ten years ago it has remained among my handful of favourite Oxford restaurants, consistently identified as such when folk ask for a recommendation.

Its splendid fish dishes, offered among daily blackboard specials, are my usual choice with chef Alberto Brunelli usually adding special touches he knows I enjoy, his divine artichokes among them.

Now Alberto and wife Yola have gone into fish in a big way with the takeover of the next-door premises to create a restaurant angled especially – though not exclusively – on the products of the sea.

Sea Salt, in business since the end of April, is already a hit. The place was rammed when I tried for a table on a recent Saturday night - as, indeed, was La Cucina. Alberto and Yola, deservedly, have a large and loyal fan base.

So, too, had Fishers, the fish-focused restaurant formerly occupying Sea Salt’s domain - for 20 years, I was surprised to discover from my review in our library. My first review of a place on the site was nearly 40 years ago, with Michel Sadones’s Clements.

To avoid competing against themselves, Alberto and Yola have created a restaurant quite different in style from La Cucina, which has always supplied authentic tastes of Italy.

There are, for instance, none of the pasta dishes or pizzas that are Cucina’s mainstay. Nothing, indeed, especially Italian, except in the robustness of the flavours and some of the “grazing” items available from the deli counter.

The cool, airy feel contrasts with the bustling, no-nonsense, café-like ambiance found next door.

Emerging from our taxi on our Wednesday night visit, Rosemarie, Olive and I entered to a cheery greeting from manager Patrick. A critic’s anonymity is not possible for me here.

He showed us to a table in one of the bay windows where a bowl of gleaming olives, green and black, awaited my consumption. Yes, mine. Though Olive shares their name and her daughter grows them, only I eat them.

Complimentary glasses of prosecco were offered as we prepared to study the menu. Items that caught the eye (but went unordered) include Colchester oysters at £22.95 a dozen, nut-crusted soft goat’s cheese with salad and beetroot carpaccio, starters of steamed mussels and pan-fried monkfish cheeks and main courses of whole grilled lobster and the chef’s mixed fish grill which tonight featured tuna steak, salmon, sardines, tiger prawns and langoustine.

A number of items are identified as ‘Hayman’s’ and ‘Alden’s’, since it is from this excellent Oxford fishmonger and associated butchery business that supplies are drawn.

My starter was baked dressed crab with a topping of Hollandaise sauce (also baked) and watercress salad. Though expensive at £9.95, the dish was still good value considering its size, quite sufficient for a main course, I thought, and certainly enough for lunch. A bowl of assorted breads was on hand for dabbing.

Olive was likewise impressed by the dimensions of her shrimp cocktail, a glassful somewhat suggestive in its appearance, with the pink of the Thousand Island dip, of a strawberry ice-cream sundae, though this would not have been topped by a large shell-on prawn.

Rosemarie selected the one starter from the specials board, seared scallops. There were three, served with coral but without their shells, alongside chunks of black pudding with pea puree and lemon butter sauce.

It was to the specials board that I turned for my main course, opting for the roast lemon sole rather than the John Dory fillets and roast sea bass also on offer.

It was a big fish, beautifully fresh and lightly cooked to the extent that the flesh beneath the skin maintained a milky opalescence. There were no accompaniments (besides an excellent caper and butter sauce), so I ordered a simple dish of steamed spinach, knowing my companions could furnish chips. There were also – a special gift from the kitchen – three of Alberto’s famous artichokes.

Olive went for fish and chips, impressed by the lightness of the batter and the freshness of the fish, haddock tonight. Rosemarie opted for the burger – first-class meat, medium cooked as specified – with cheese topping, gherkin and home-made tomato and red onion relish.

Complimentary refreshment came in a bowl of icy lemon grass granita (three spoons). Olive went it alone with a slice of chocolate mousse with caramel crackle base.

We drank a light Portuguese white wine (Fonte de Nicol) and, to finish, glasses of fiery grappa specially imported from next door.