Quite often you see couples eating in restaurants sitting in glum silence apparently having nothing to say to one another. This never happens to Reg and me. Take last week, when we went for the second time to have dinner at the Canton Arms in Stockwell. Eating a foie gras toastie, the bar snack of the year (my award), I said to Reg: “I wonder what was the first name of Mr Breville, inventor of the toasted sandwich maker?” “Neville,” he replied.

Well, I have found out that, uncharacteristically, Reg is wrong. In 1932, Australians Bill O’Brien and Harry Norville combined their names to create the Breville brand. They started off making radios and then mine detectors for the war. It was in 1974 that they invented the toastie maker or, more discursively, the Breville scissor action snack ’n’ sandwich toaster with a cut ’n’ seal mechanism. It has taken more than a quarter of a century for someone, in this case Trish Hilferty, to hit on the perfect filling for slices of thinly sliced white bread buttered on the outside and crimped into a crisp hot triangle. If you have problems with foie gras, either think long and hard about battery chickens or go for the haggis or Montgomery Cheddar and chutney fillings.

Hilferty, born in the same country as Breville, could be voted Miss Gastropub — although she would hate the honour. Having cooked in London at The Eagle, The Fox Dining Room, Anchor & Hope and Great Queen Street and called one of her three cookbooks Gastropub Classics: 150 Defining Recipes, she naturally bears the crown. And like many female chefs who beaver away in the back room she does so without sufficient public acclaim, so that title will have to stand.

Canton Arms — the name refers to the member states of Switzerland — is a big, fairly ramshackle pub to which not much has been done except perhaps use up the oxblood red paint left over from decorating Great Queen Street and hanging mirrors to replace screens that once showed Sky Sports. Objets décoratifs are large jars of preserves and chutneys and, at the back, a few rows of books. Little has been done to upset the established clientele and presumably it is to be hoped that, like shy creatures of the forest, they can be gently coaxed from the familiarity of the bar at the front to the dining area beyond. The extraordinarily reasonable prices for both food and wines will help.

Menus which change for every meal are short and to the point about seasonality and vibrancy and bolstered by a couple of dishes — one usually a main course for sharing — written on a blackboard. Two of those that we tried were an excellent Aussie-leaning steak pie with rich, dark gravy and buttery shortcrust pastry — “My favourite bit is the pastry,” said a waiter who I thought I remembered from the Anchor & Hope — and a French textbook cassoulet where the white beans, humming a garlicky tune, were precisely the right texture.

Three ace first courses — besides that foie gras toastie bar snack — were butterbean and black cabbage broth in which the tang of bacon might have tripped up a vegetarian, leeks gribiche where the salty, savoury, herby mayo was bristling with finely chopped hard-boiled egg, and a bowl of steamed mussels perfect in their simplicity.

The main course for one of roast “Cob” chicken with sauce soubise and watercress was the only time a dish faltered. Onion sauce — the meaning of soubise — is lovely with lamb but in my view less so with chicken, however crisp the skin (which it was). Little chocolate pot topped with pouring cream at a little price (£3.60) was the ideal dessert in composition and quantity and crème fraîche tart with pink rhubarb was heaven.

The amiable staff have been directed to be a bit Anchor & Hopeless about accepting bookings for groups of fewer than eight but they are willing to predict the chances of a table. It is a punt well worth taking even if Stockwell isn’t your manor.