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A few hundred metres north of Bologna’s main square and its marble clad San Petronio Basilica is a neighbourhood not frequented by tourists, where locals eat and drink and carouse among the ancient, cobbled streets. There are a few terrific restaurants where the food is first rate and the experience is about as Italian as it comes.

We were reminded of this at Nolita in Claremont where the service, the décor and the simple dishes are a nostalgic reminder of small bar restaurants in Italy. Authentic is a much traduced word in Australian hospitality, but Nolita could claim – but doesn’t – to be an entirely authentic experience. Close your eyes and you could be in a back street in Milan or Bologna. It has atmosphere too, that rarest of assets for a successful restaurant.

Nolita was recently taken over by Il Lido and Canteen Pizza owner Lyndon Waples and the changes he and his team have brought to the Bay View Terrace shop front have been gradual and low key but nonetheless game changing.

The pasta is now house made, the produce is fresh and superb, frozen food has gone from the kitchen, the cookery is restrained, modest and back to Italian basics. The menu has been deftly redesigned. There’s new stemware in the dining room. In short the experience is better and more authentic than it’s ever been.

Want to find out just how good a kitchen is? Order calamari. There are a thousand ways to ruin this simple fry-up of squid rings.

The experience – and it’s always about the experience – is driven by restaurant manager Giacomo (Jack) Moriero, an Italian hospo professional who thinks first and last about his customers.

“Would you like a break before the next course?” Yes. “Give me a number … 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes?” 15 minutes thanks.

The question rarely gets asked. Even more rare is to be asked when the main course should be called away. This is not only first-rate customer service, it is a pleasurable antidote to the typically off-hand, service-by-numbers delivered in many Perth restaurants. Moriero is also a trained wine expert (“don’t call me a sommelier”) with a degree in oenology. His wine recommendations are delivered with savant level knowledge.

Moriero is one of the finest front-of-house operators in the city.

Want to find out just how good a kitchen is? Order calamari. There are a thousand ways to ruin this simple fry-up of squid rings. Nolita’s kitchen knows its stuff. The small squid pieces were dusted in a well seasoned flour and cornmeal. They arrived hot and crunchy like popcorn. A cheek of lemon and an indifferent mayonnaise was on the side. The squids were superb and as simply cooked as good produce should be.

The primi course was a pasta dish sauced with a light white wine sugo of pork, sage and cherry tomatoes. The flavours were swashbuckling but not flashy. Seasoning was heavy but well nuanced. And it was served hot. The pork mince was also salted well and crusty in parts from a good sear. It was a difficult dish to put down.

For mains, sirloin steak was ordered rare and delivered rare and properly charred. It was delivered with a simple reduction sauce as black as anthracite and deeply flavoured and garnished with snake beans which had been artistically bundled and tied in a knot, no really, and cooked on the grill. Some of the beans were charred by the fire. Those at the ‘centre’ of the knot were just cooked, green and tender. It’s an interesting technique, more Margaret Fulton than haute cuisine, but it was sensational. It takes a confident chef to cook vegetables just this side of burnt and for the outcome to be so right.

On the side, a plate of caulini, a portmanteau vegetable: half cauliflower, half broccoli, with florets at the end and a delicate flavour. It was served with romesco sauce which was way out of whack. Too much onion, not enough roasted capsicum and roasted tomato and too little of the acerbic back beat of red wine vinegar that this Spanish sauce requires. It was beige. Literally and figuratively.

The romesco was the only slip up in an otherwise delightful meal. The kitchen is a well-oiled machine. It doesn’t show off. There’s no weird look-at-me cookery going on. Experience, polished technique and chefs who know what they’re doing are the hallmarks of Nolita’s simply cooked, cleanly flavoured Italian dishes.

Just like you’d find in the back blocks of Bologna.