There are places up and down the country crying out for a single good gastropub. Islington isn’t one of them. The House, The Duke of Cambridge, The Drapers Arms, The Barnsbury, The Marquess, The Albion, The Northgate ... In Islington central, you would crash into a gastro if you walked a few minutes in any direction blindfold.

The Compass, though, is sited a little outside that epicentre. It’s that bit further from Upper Street, yet not in Barnsbury either, bordering, rather, the estates that go down towards King’s Cross. That location must be why, over several recent visits, it has seemed underpopulated a month after opening. It’s certainly not because it’s not delivering the goods.

The Salmon and Compasses, as it used to be called, was once a gay pub, very friendly, middle-aged and local. Then it turned more clubby, with live DJ’s. Now it’s had The Treatment.

The whole ground floor has been opened out into a single room and filled with secondhand furniture, some of it a touch rickety. There’s a new long oak-panelled bar with an open kitchen behind and a stuffed owl above. Inside, it’s dark and cool with a maroon ceiling. Outside, there are a few tables on the pavement under a bright red awning, while the exterior of the building, which used to be a meaningfully toxic pink, has gone tastefully stone-coloured.

The new proprietors, John Rentsen and Charlie Silver, also own The Green on the corner of Clerkenwell Green, and this is their second venture, so they know what they’re doing without yet having become formulaic. The head chef is Ben Bishop — from The Duke of Cambridge, as it happens.

There’s a cheapish list of bar snacks — a word now shunned, though snacks they remain, including duck scotch egg and brown sauce (£3.50), and a funky black pudding sausage roll with English mustard for £2.50. Beers currently include Bath Gem and an IPA from Whitstable at £3 a pint. So it could still be a pub, sort of ...

The main menu is short and purposeful, emphasising gamey British produce (English snails, Cornish fish, rare-breed steak). Confit of rabbit and green peppercorn terrine (£6) was a huge serving, almost half a rabbit, served on a wooden board with a little bowl of gherkins and toasted pain de campagne. Although it was pleasant enough, cooked this way rabbit becomes a little flannelly in texture without gaining any great depth of flavour.

Roast squash, watercress, pea shoots, goat’s cheese and pine nuts (£5), presented as a little pyramid, had a great fresh taste, the tang of the watercress offsetting the cheese and the mellow earthiness of the soft butternut squash perfectly. Good dressing as well. Just right for summer — and any kitchen that can make a simple salad as well as this can be trusted.

Roast wood pigeon (£12) hit the spot too, served halved off the bone in a winey reduction of pan juices accompanied by fresh peas and asparagus tips, rather than the listed broad beans, and a considerable amount of soft and mild confit garlic. The bird was cooked medium but was young enough to be tender — though a sharp knife would still have helped.

Pan-fried sea trout with new potatoes and samphire (£12) was served skin side up, strangely, with a “sauce vierge” that seemed mainly fresh tomato dice, although here, too, there were again several of those soft-braised whole cloves of garlic on the plate, unannounced — the chef evidently slipping the stuff in ad lib.

This was a generous piece of fish, judiciously cooked, and the samphire was delicious too, served just right, neither left all wild and rooty nor chopped up small, but in salty little sprigs, presumably steamed rather than boiled.
To follow, an English cheese plate was more pricey at £8.50 but top quality. Served with a choice of biscuits and bread, both some membrillo and some clovey chutney, there was Stinking Bishop, a Yorkshire Blue, and Smoked Poacher. Vanilla, Earl Grey and prune crème brûlée (£4) was a delicious little sweetness, freshly caramelised on top.

A brisk wine list opens with likeable Santa Isidro Pegoes red and white from Portugal at £13.50 a bottle, £3.30 a glass and, obligingly, £9.50 for a 50cl carafe. The staff are friendly, good-looking and attentive, the music subdued and sympathetic. What else do you need? The corner table here seems the throne of felicity to me. There’s nowhere in Islington I’d sooner spend my money at the moment. The Compass is N1’s answer to the Bull & Last in Highgate.

And what’s so wrong with a gastro on every corner? Whenever an ailing boozer is converted, resentful old lags always protest that they liked it just the way it used to be — smoky, scummy, full of crims. That’s just what the French, with their usual clarity, call nostalgia for mud.