On its business card the apostrophe in the word Bower's has been printed upside down. Everything else about this charming restaurant is the right way up. The service, from the owner, James Bower, is informed, positive, spot on, tickety boo, just the job.

He may tell you about his paternal great grandfather, Fred, who was a butcher in Malton; or about his grandfather, George Bower, who had a restaurant and ballroom in the same town. There is a photo in the restaurant of George sliding a works Norton round a corner on an unnamed track in the 1920s. It looks like fun. Bower's butchery closed in the 1980s. A family bacon factory in nearby Norton passed into other hands.

James Bower came back to the area after a career at the Dorchester and then VIP cheffing on yachts and private islands for the wealthy and famous. He opened last December. He replaces Sous La Table on the narrow site in Cheltenham Crescent. The location is good yet bad. Harrogate, a breezy confident and sometimes swanky town between the cities of Leeds and York, has twice as many restaurants and cafes and pub-eateries than any town of this size needs. It probably has four times as many. In places, they are side by side by side. It is as tough as choosing a fish restaurant on the waterfront in Dieppe.

Bower's Bistro is far enough from the main hub to be overlooked, yet it is but a few minutes' walk from Bettys - which will be overflowing when others are mostly empty - and just round the corner from the town's exhibition centre, should delegates take his route.

In the Crescent it faces more elaborate frontages (such as Loch Fyne Restaurant and Est Est Est, both well-known chains).

So James Bower has to build up a following among those looking for intimate, bespoke service. He is confident about his standards and that there is enough business for everyone to do well. In the kitchen he retained head chef David Hunter. James handles duties out front. At the time of my visit the website was not in place but it should be there now.

These days the www trail is the method many use to find somewhere to eat or stay. An internet search for this bistro brings its link with Fine Dine In. This is a Harrogate company that delivers food from various restaurants to your home or office. Consequently, Bower's main menu and wine list is among those listed by the middlemen at FDI.

While the food thus delivered can never have the precision of the same meal eaten at the Bistro (the lidded containers conspire to steam hot food) it must be useful additional trade if a place is quiet.

This it was on a Tuesday at 1pm. Two lady diners were babbling away happily in the window table. As well they should because, judged from this one visit, the Bistro is excellent - and what a change to see modest mark-ups on the drinks. Try the Belgian draught De Koninck, close your eyes and think of those fine cafe bars in Antwerp.

The room is floored and furnished with wood. Crusty acrylics of French scenes add that certain je ne sais quoi; plastic ivy drops from the ceiling and hangs inches over my glass. Oil-fuelled candle lamps poised on a tree branch must look good at night and have made the ceiling sooty above. Nothing that a bit of fine tuning can't fix.

Confit of duck leg with chorizo cassoulet was, just possibly, maybe, better than any had in Languedoc, Corbieres, that memorable one in Aragon; certainly better than any tasted in England except chez moi. The haricots were smaller than the rustic beans served with chorizo in the inns and Paradores of northern Spain. To get something tasting this good, without the subliminal inspiration of the Pyrenees outside the window (just a view across the road to the backs of terraced houses) is remarkable.