La Stalla, Assisi, Umbria

I have a great idea for a restaurant with a difference. Find an old barn. Sweep it out (not too assiduously – a few strands of straw are all to the good). Paint the walls with grafitti and furnish the place with wooden tables and chairs, the older and more rickety the better. Cover the tables with gingham cloths and adorn with rustic cutlery. Now, and this is really important, construct an ancient log-fired grill in a suitable corner, one where the logs burn down to embers which can be used to cook food on huge grills above. You'll need plenty of logs. Big ones. Let the fire blacken the walls and the beams of the ceiling over time. Use the grill to cook all kinds of tasty foods, and serve simply, with jugs of wine, to the hoardes of appreciative diners who will beat a path to your door.

It's a great idea, but sadly (or happily) not an original one. La Stalla, a mile out of Assisi on the road, well, track really, to the Santuario delle Carceri, has been doing it for years. I had read about the place. I'd checked it out one lunchtime, and booked for that evening. (Some places are better in the dark. La Stalla is one of them.) But I hadn't been prepared for that evening's experience. Crikey, this was good.

It was smoky, in an appetising way. The cooking on the huge grill seemed to be no-one's responsibility in particular, but anyone who passed (sometimes we weren't sure if they were even members of staff or just passers-by) checked and turned the food. A sort of communal cooking. We ate sausage and quail, lamb and beef, all grilled to perfection. Nestled amongst the glowing ashes were dusty grey orbs that turned out to be baked potatoes. Lightly dusted off, then slathered with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, their flesh yellow and melting, they were the best baked potatoes I've ever tasted. Small earthenware dishes were placed on the grill too – cheese, baked with wine and herbs.

The tables are communal, and part way through the evening a single, elegant middle-aged lady graciously joined us and enjoyed a joint of chicken grilled, as everything else, on this enormous indoor barbecue. She smiled and acknowledged us, as if we had somehow joined the La Stalla club. Perhaps we had. The volume in the restaurant increased through the evening, as diners enjoyed the food and wine. The grill glowed like a furnace. Extra logs were added and the fire was stoked. More food was added to the grill. This was the kind of place you could settle in and stay long, long into the night.

For several days afterwards the smell of smoke lingered on my jumper and made me smile.

La Stalla, Via Santuario delle Carceri, 24, 06081 Assisi (PG)

Tel 075 812 317

Loads of reviews. No site of their own. The smoke probably stops them from seeing the computer screen. Just go. Go.