Mark Twain once mused how as a know-it-all young lad he thought his father so ignorant he could hardly stand to be around the old man.

By the age of 21, the young Twain was “astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

The same might well be said about Italian cookery. As an ignorant young eater, The Gourmand was left confused by the rustic Southern European fare, so barefaced in its simplicity it seemed. How could pasta with just butter and cheese something to get excited about?

Years later, as the concept of less is more took hold, it became obvious this old country did know a thing or two about creating delicious things with a few excellent ingredients.

Yet while there’s a glut of Italian restaurants in the city, only a few to really get the pan juices flowing.

One fantastic little place that does get rosemary aromas hitting the olfactory glands is Franco’s, well away from the city centre blob and the Church Road stretch, out on Victoria Terrace.

It’s a delightful spot that oozes cuteness once inside and away from the roaring Kingsway.

The rustic farmhouse style has exposed brick walls, chunky wooden tables and large round copper light shades. The carefully crafted unshowy atmosphere harks back to a nostalgic time when eating out was for strictly for special occasions.

Lovingly knocked into shape by owner Gianfranco Zitoli around two and half years ago from a unsightly Chinese takeaway, it was initially as a pizza restaurant.

It now stands apart from its compatriot rivals in cuisine as well as geography, promising something different from Bolognese.

As a small osteria – a place serving simple wine and food - the menu is aptly tight and all the better for it.

You can’t get much more pleasing than grilled sardines, with lemon, capers, olives and fresh parsley.

Nor is there any smarty-pants about the polpette - fragrant veal meatballs in a rich tomato sauce with cheese.

While Gianfranco was keen to distance Franco’s from the growing legion of pizza places, pasta is a big part of the menu, made fresh in a basement prep kitchen, alongside the various, voluminous breads.

Even the much-abused lasagne gets a showing, albeit with a couple of tweaks. Instead of beef there is culatello, a prestigious sausage made from the haunch in Parma, and for cheese there is luxurious burratta, mozzarella’s creamier cousin, which is lightly smoked with straw.

The ingredients certainly add cachet to the dish, but there is no reinventing the wheel, it is simply a very good lasagne, with all the rich comfort and savoury depth.

Another pleasing pasta dish is a seafood ravioli – hand-pinched half-moons filled with soft salmon. A shellfish shindig of crayfish, mussels and clams come on top, mollusc juices grinding up against the piquant tomato sauce.

There was nothing of Twain's ignorant father - it was a complex dish near philosophical depth.

The only downside was the terracotta serving dish and its contents being so scaldingly hot it was as if they’d been baked in Mount Vesuvius, drying out part of the sauce and pasta, and damaging the flavour until cool - a bit of a buzz-kill for such an otherwise delicious dish.

For a bit more cash there is simply grilled fish and meat. Catch of the day on our visit was King of the ocean, Dover sole, with steamed clams, baby squid, king prawns and langoustine, an illustrious line-up with a fair price tag to match.

The small desert menu had a smattering of classics, including Italy’s most famous, the tiramasu.

After heathen cooks nearly ruined it altogether with badly whipped cream and instant coffee, it seems to be shaking off its naff reputation, and Franco’s is a fine version, thick with mascarpone, whipped with egg and a bitter snap of espresso at the end.

Gianfranco has created a marvellous enclave next-door to the equally great neighbouring bakery Sugardough, on an otherwise out-of-the way strip.

But with various developments on the cards, including the King Alfred, perhaps this seaside spot become a new nucleus of Hove.