Local eats: Fantozzi, N14

The psychoactive chocolate lunatics who make Go-Co bars were out lobbying last week - by which they mean invading London's smart hotels and restaurants, throwing down a mat, and breakdancing in the lobby. No one in a decent reception ever gives them one. But the Go-Co boys had fun. At least someone did.

A maitre d' whom I like very much - we'll call him Fred from the Bush Bar And Grill - grumbled to me once that people don't know how to enjoy themselves in restaurants anymore. They either get paralytic and act like twits, or they sit there, pofaced, 'enjoying' their meal. He told me about the time one of his favourite customers once did a cartwheel, in a dress, between the tables - and that high-spirited, inventive tomfoolery was what made London restaurants the fantastic theatres they should be, not the 'solemn cathedrals to food' they have become. Fun is not on the menu in a lot of places these days. The more expensive the menu, the less the staff want you to have a laugh, it seems. Colourful folk are frowned upon, unless they are chefs frequently profiled in Sunday supplements.

Two colourful folk, the Dirty Blond and the City Foodie, joined me to sally forth to the Thirties brickwork and waitress service Wimpys of Southgate (just two stops from the mysterious Cockfosters at the end of the Piccadilly Line).

Fantozzi is a proper local Italian - checked tablecloths, all human life, crispy base pizzas, family-owned, and with dodgy disco and Eighties pop as a soundtrack. When a birthday cake comes out, as two did on the Monday night we visited, the lights go off and a Black Lace-style birthday loop pumps out of the stereo while the waiters smash tambourines against their skinny hips.

The laminated menu features all the old favourites - avocado and prawns, the classic pastas, a house sauce, meat, fish and those ersatz fancy puddings they fly in from Italy that come in lemon shells and coconuts. The City Foodie - he never eats a starter for under a tenner - had bresaola with mozzarella. The bresaola was a bit swamped by the mozzarella and some unnecessary chopped salad, but we were taken by the quality of the cheese, which was soft, milky and sexy. Dirty ate a proper carbonara, more cream than I would go for, but the tagliatelle was distinctively eggy. I had ordinary asparagus smothered in garlic butter because I knew my main course would be hefty.

It was a lobster spaghetti, with half that crustacean and lots of his claws (they provided claw crackers, which, increasingly, people don't do), whole prawns, bits of squid and clams in the shell, and a few shrimps thrown in for luck, coated in a fairly dry tomato sauce sitting on a large oval plate. I threw some olive oil over it and tucked in, with my hands, even for the spaghetti. The waiters kept the finger bowls covered and my white and pale blue ensemble was soon spattered in oily red spots. It was a plate of food which would have been only fairly good if I hadn't enjoyed eating it so much. The City Foodie had pasta with salmon and cream, which I tasted and nodded to, a sprinkling of fresh parsley tickling out a little freshness from a rich dish. The Dirty Blonde had stinco arrosto, a shin of pork with wild mushroom sauce. It had the same ragged quality as a slow-cooked lamb shank, and was unexceptional, but for its hamminess.

I've done my fair share of fun Italian trats, and Fantozzi was up there with the best - warm, welcoming, thrumming with life, and with amusing and entirely unironic tasteless art on the walls. Their lemoncello is great and the wine list a study in popular Italian wines. A local university lecturer, wearing white linen and a fetching tan said, 'This is categorically the friendliest place in Southgate.' A long table of Italians included everyone up to great granny, who was sitting there chain-smoking and wearing her housecoat. When we left at 10.45pm, people were still ordering. It was Monday. We went in miserable buggers and came out singing, the cab driver turned up Magic FM and we didn't stop harmonising til paytime. We weren't even drunk.

Fantozzi Restaurant
Chase Side, London, N14 5PH