Fishers, in St Clements, is Oxford’s best fish and seafood restaurant — a category in which, surprisingly, it faces competition from very few potential rivals.

I have enjoyed many happy visits since it opened, as long ago as 1995. There have also been less agreeable outings there. Consistency of delivery has been a problem over the years, as a study of online ‘reviews’ makes clear.

Last Thursday, in need of a convenient place for dinner after the centenary birthday celebrations at the Ultimate Picture Palace, I booked a table there. The meal turned out to be one of the happy occasions, though it was not entirely without faults.

Our booking was a late-ish one, since we weren’t scheduled to be away from the cinema until 9pm. Even so, the restaurant was still full as Rosemarie and I entered through the revolving doors, with only one obviously empty table for two in the centre of the room: this was ours. While I couldn’t fault its position for the feeling it gave of being in the thick of things, it had a downside in being on an area of wobbling floorboards. Every time a waitress passed — and this was often — there was movement reminiscent of the surging of the sea which amid the maritime decor (tacky or evocative according to taste) was far from comfortable.

Service was brisk and cheery, with the delivery of a litle dish of complimentary pickled anchovies quickly followed by the arrival of good fresh bread — white and brown-with-grains. By then we were also enjoying our first sips of the Chilean chardonnay (until I made the mistake of taking a glug with an anchovy, thereby creating a foul taste combination of wine and sweet vinegar). The El Otro 2009, incidentally, was peculiarly priced at £5.95 for a 250cl glass and £18.50 for the bottle, making it more expensive to bulk buy. I pointed this out to the waitress, who said it was a mistake.

Another mistake was my order of prawn and spinach gratin as a starter. The taste was far too cloying for me, with lots of sweet Gruyere cheese in the dish. It proved fine for Rosemarie, though, who very gamely swapped her pot of lightly floured (if floured at all) deep-fried whitebait with tartare sauce and lemon. I liked them very much.

Other starters on the menu included pan-fried scallops, butternut squash soup, deep-fried calamari and grilled sardines. The selection changes daily to take account of what is available and what is good. The same applies, naturally, to the main courses, which tonight featured such temptations as baked bream, baked plaice, char-grilled swordfish steak and bouillabaisse.

My fancy was for baked sea bass, which proved a very wise choice. The fish was of similar dimension to the one in the photograph above (that is, quite a big one) and cooked to perfection. The flesh flaked easily from the bones, and there was plenty of chive oil to moisten it further. Though I ordered chips (more to see what they were like than because I actually wanted to eat them), I instead took delivery of boring boiled new potatoes. When the mistake was pointed out, chips were speedily substituted — so speedily that they weren’t properly browned. I also had OK buttered spinach.

Rosemarie’s main course was a grilled fillet of ling (a not especially common member of the cod family) nicely teamed with mashed potato and a leek and parmesan cream sauce. She somehow found room then for banana fritters — the fruit soft and ripe, the batter properly cooked through — with toffee ice cream.

I finished with cheese and Bath Olivers, which came with absurdly generous quantities of ‘white’ (of course bright green) grapes, chopped celery and onion marmalade. This might have seemed good value at £4.95, except that the Somerset brie was miles off ripe and the Stilton was half rind. The West Country mature cheddar was good, though, especially with sips of the Domaine de la Bastide Côtes du Rhône.