According to my highly unscientific algorithm, the north-eastern township of Bright is lucky to have one notable, hatted restaurant in the form of Simone's. Per head of population, the region is lucky to the power of 10 to have another, the two-hatted Provenance in Beechworth, some 57 kilometres away.

The bit where my algorithm gives up and slinks home is the arrival of another totally wow restaurant right in the centre of Bright. Tani Eat & Drink not only won the current Good Food Guide gong for best new regional restaurant, it had the gumption to plonk itself right next door to the august, 28-year-old Simone's. The odds of that? Pretty damn slim.

I'd suggest something alchemical is happening in the region, if it weren't for the trail of evidence running back to Provenance's Michael Ryan.

Hamish Nugent, one half of Tani, worked for a long time with Ryan and shares that refined modern Japanese-European sensibility.

I was delighted to share in Tani's gonging last year, although the review was put on ice when they closed for several months for a makeover. The biggest change is a bar and a semi-private dining area partitioned off to the side of a straightforward room of polished floorboards, high-backed leather chairs and bare wooden tables.

It's comfortably unremarkable, although the open fire is very welcome. But the food? Even more than last year, the food justifies four hours on the Hume. It's distinguished by the use of the new/old techniques getting so much press these days: fermenting, dehydrating and curing, as well as the ingredients du jour (pork neck, kale, seaweed, the list goes on), although being of a Japanese persuasion, it's not so much about fashion as the way things simply are.

That whole fermenting business, for instance. A lacto-fermented cabbage leaf (they use the whey left over from their cheese-making) is draped over a deboned and lightly brined Milawa quail. There's an umami-rich red miso and garlic dressing, and the sweetness of fresh fennel and orange versus the savouriness of dill and capers, but it's really a smackdown between the velvet-textured bird and the bright aliveness of the cabbage.

Or the dashi egg custard, spanner crab and saltbush, with air-dried bonito - fish bacon, I prefer to call it - sprinkled lightly over the top to collude with confetti-like pieces of jamon. Torn rice crackers and a powdery snow of maltodextrin and almond add a delicate nutty touch.

A dish I remember from my first visit is a modern art jumble of sweet corn puree and kernels, fried potato skins, sunflower seeds, roasted petals of onion, and toasted shards of nori. Wobbly blobs of smoked beef marrow hide in the undergrowth with the rich orange jelly of preserved egg, and corn silk, usually destined for the compost, adds a sweet throat-tickling crunch.

There are no entrees and mains, so much as a series of dishes of increasing heaviness and expense. We pause near the top, where wagyu rump cap sells the beef roast idyll to the Orient, with a slow-poached egg, muscular king brown mushrooms and fried kale. Dessert is a real dessert: a Rockefeller-rich chocolate cream, undercut with a subtle liquorice ice-cream and malt biscuit.

It works well with co-owner Rachel Reed, also a chef, working the floor; the service is keen, insightful and right on the money, including her suggestion of a Del Bosco chardonnay with a fair bit of age (it's an '08) that drinks surprisingly well. But in fairness to others I've criticised over the same crime, they deserve a rap over the knuckles for charging for bread, even though it comes with tangy curds from Myrtleford Butter Factory. Paper napkins aren't much chop, either.

I don't mean to sound like an anti-regionalist hatemonger, but if this food was presented at a city restaurant I'd be pretty ecstatic. Here in Bright, population 2000, I'm not only ecstatic, I'm in desperate need of a new algorithm.

THE LOWDOWN
The best bit Really smart food
The worst bits Paper napkins. Paying for bread
Go-to dish Quail, fermented cabbage, citrus, red miso and garlic dressing

Twitter: @LarissaDubecki or email: ldubecki@fairfaxmedia.com.au