What do you love about good (and perhaps endearingly bad) restaurants?

As an unhealthily regular visitor to restaurants good, bad and indifferent, I was recently asked to contribute to a feature on critics’ bugbears. It was all too easy to work myself into a righteous frenzy about thumping house soundtracks and the barefaced expectation of two sets of tips.

Even at the top end, few restaurant experiences are perfect. Now more than ever, minor irritants – Mrs Sturgess is my mum, not me, and no, we wouldn’t like to sit next to the bogs – can accumulate to make a dinnerly treat feel like money wasted.

But, for all the easy gripes, restaurants are great. You’ve got to love cracking open a new menu, or discovering somewhere that’s run with dedication and integrity. And then there’s a Murray mint with the bill. Ooh, buttery. Here are some of the things I like about restaurants.

The passion

The term has been brought to its odious nadir by MasterChef; during the last civilian series Gregg observed, deadly serious, that a contestant had ‘good passion’.

Nonetheless, I’m wont to get a bit teary when faced with some restaurateurs’ obsessive love of their art. At The Sportsman in Seasalter, Stephen Harris makes his own butter and his own salt. From the sea!

But the chef most likely to brew those happy tears in his customers is Marc Wilkinson, of the Wirral’s Fraiche. He works alone, very hard, producing intelligent, delicate food in courses that come at you in lovely waves. Even in this weather, I’d bet my Kenwood he doesn’t have a tan. He never leaves his restaurant.

The little people

No, not kids, although it’s nice when they’re welcome. The independent operators who, virtually unnoticed beyond their patch, understand their customers, know great food and put the two together to devastatingly good effect. It helps if they know enough about business to stay in it.

Brent Castle and his family, who run The Three Crowns in Herefordshire, are the perfect examples. On a cold night, faced with only two customers (thankfully, a rarity) many chefs would close the kitchen. He’s been known to produce an impromptu tasting menu instead.

The familiarity

When a waitress knows how you like your eggs, that’s a restaurant at its best. The quality of the egg cookery is secondary. I’m mildly jealous of the WOM-ers who happily recommend their regular haunts. We moved house six months ago, and what with all the new restaurants, the nearest I get to one of those reassuring, life-affirming Cheers-style moments is tagging along to someone else’s favourite place with them. Susan Smillie salutes The Yellow House, in an unpromising corner of Surrey Quays, and so do all who go with her.

The service

Good service is a glorious thing, and there are many ways of getting it right. The most seamless service dance – think the subtler work of Pan’s People – I’ve ever witnessed was at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. Our water glasses were always full, and we barely saw the pourer; across the room, 12 main courses were being served simultaneously in one graceful pincer movement.

But you don’t have to spend a fortune to bask in the attentions of the switched-on waitress who knows her shallots, or to enjoy the peculiar brand of brusqueness that goes well with salt beef sandwiches.

The petits fours

If the Murray mints are off, the next best thing is a silver tray of petits fours. Apart from a recent encounter with a fruit jelly that had accidentally been rolled in salt, not sugar, here, I love them. They’re sweet and miniature, like babies, some places bring them even when you haven’t ordered coffee, and they’re compensation for a crap dessert, or choosing cheese. Peanut butter ice cream lollies at Purnell’s? You don’t get a finish like that at home.

What do you love about good (and perhaps endearingly bad) restaurants?