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On the very long list of Things Melbourne Does Best, I’d say that the neighbourhood bistro is pretty high up. There are fantastic modestly sized restaurants in every nook of this town, some of which get little to no press, serving classic Euro-fare to a grateful local audience. This casual excellence, so common it’s barely remarked upon, is one of the marks of a great city.

The Recreation Bistro and Bottleshop has sat comfortably in this category for the past seven years, since owners Joe Durrant, Mark Protheroe and Steven Nelson took over the former corner pub space on Queens Parade in Fitzroy North.

The Recreation has all the personality of an owner-run operation, with Durrant acting as maitre d’ and Nelson as chef. Over the past few years, Nelson has been working on elevating the menu, offering a more refined version of French-inspired bistro food.

And in the past few months, the space has had its own upgrade, with a renovation that turned the front room into a comfortable bar area, and new furniture, slick decorative additions, and soundproofing added to the main dining room.

The overall result is a venue that feels more considered and stylish, while retaining its brick-walled, darkly welcoming appeal.

Nelson’s food these days is strikingly elegant. He obviously takes cues from the bistronomy movement – French but modern; French but fresh. There’s a gorgeous soup, a creme ninon ($27), made from cream and champagne, with a generous heaping of spanner crab meat in its silky depths. Garfish is lightly cured and served with blood orange ($29), its silvery sweetness bolstered by the citrus.

An unlikely favourite one evening was a deceptively simple saffron tagliatelle ($29 as an entree; $42 as a main), which comes on a bed of creamy stracciatella with zucchini and wild garlic. It’s one of those dishes that screams springtime, light enough to gobble with abandon but substantial enough to feel like a meal.

Flathead ($50) is barbecued perfectly and laid across a jumble of yellow squash, sorrel and sauce antiboise, a tomato, olive and herb amalgamation that plays like a piquant deconstructed eggplant-less ratatouille.

A dry-aged duck breast ($55), its meat flawlessly rosy, comes atop thin slices of sweet and earthy beetroot, with pistachio lending a dusky edge.

There are some small tweaks The Recreation could work on that would make the experience even better, and more cohesive. Theirs is a truly impressive wine list, but I get the sense most customers don’t dive deeply into it.

How else to explain the night that I got excited about three different bottles in succession, ordering each one, only to have the increasingly desperate server come back and report that they didn’t have the wines I’d ordered?

We were halfway through our mains by the time this almost comical scenario played out, ending in the server desperately pouring us a glass on the house, just so we could have something, anything, to accompany the last bites of our meal. (To their credit, the staff comped all our drinks at the end of the meal, as an apology. It was a weird evening, but they did everything they could to make it right.)

“[The Recreation] has the potential to become one of the inner north’s best bistros.”

I love the idea of a rum cart, a celebration of the sugarcane-based spirit that (theoretically) can be rolled out at dessert time, but I wonder if the reason I never saw it in action during my visits is that there’s a bit of a disconnect in the idea of championing rum as a category when it has nothing to do with the rest of the offering – even the cocktail list has only one rum-based libation available.

There was the occasional cooking misstep, like a pineapple tart tatin ($18) that arrived with its crust undercooked and doughy, despite it taking more than 30 minutes to appear, but mostly the rushed quality of the service doesn’t quite align with the very high quality (and price) of the food. I’m sure this is a case of staffing levels that haven’t kept up with the popularity of the place – it’s been packed, Durrant is a consummate professional, and the rest of his crew is trying mightily to keep up.

I hope that service evens out in the coming months because the look and feel and food at the new improved Recreation are all fantastic. It has the potential to become one of the inner north’s best bistros. And in this town? That’s saying something.