We have never really got the ‘no reservations’ thing. We know that some of the most interesting places in London have that rule, but we find it a massive deterrent. We understand the wish not to be booked up weeks ahead with people for whom the booking becomes a diarised aspiration. But surely it must result in a different elite: people with a schedule that means they will happily queue for two or three hours, the appetite control to withstand the consequent hunger pangs (or do they have a big lunch?) and the constitution that allows them to fill the time with cocktails and beers without the table spinning by the time they sit down. And there’s something really quite stressful, not least at the end of a work day, about not knowing whether or not you will end up where you want.

But it’s obvious that it works at 40 Maltby Street: people wander in from the surrounding area, especially the apartments that mostly weren’t there when the place opened a few years ago, in little groups that include families as well as 20-something hipsters. Some people have a couple of dishes and don’t stay too long, so there’s plenty of turnover. And frankly, it would be difficult to reserve a stool perched at the end of what is more a work-bench than a table.

We will continue to resent it elsewhere, but will forgive it in 40 Maltby Street’s case. In fact, the extraordinary food and the brilliant service make everything else forgivable in 40 Maltby Street’s case.

We walk past 40 Maltby Street nearly ever Saturday after shopping at Bermondsey Spa Terminus. As often as not we pick up a quick lunch from a stand on the adjacent Ropewalk. But we’re in the midst of our shopping then, we don’t do sit down (or even perch) lunches on a Saturday and until now we had never planned well enough to take our chance at other times. Now we will be heading back as often as we can, armed with the helpful (and for the purposes of this review secret!) advice from the staff about when it’s a bit quieter. It will still be a pain to make sure we are there at times when we can get a spot, but we will make it work.

So, we perched on our stools under a railway arch, the higgledy-piggledy space shared with the warehouse of Gergovie Wines. I can imagine my dad, if such places had existed when he was still around and in the unlikely event that he would have set foot in one, saying that it was the sort of place he would take his car for a service. On the other side of the tracks further down Druid Street that’s exactly what the arches are used for. But instead of Phil Mitchell wiping his hands on an oily rag, this railway arch serves up fabulous food that manages to be innovative and simple at the same time.

Some reviewers have described 40 Maltby Street’s small plates as random – you don’t know what are going to get, it doesn’t necessarily fit together stylistically but it’s always good. We didn’t think it was random at all: an adventure, yes, but at the end of our five dishes our perceptions had been challenged and we had eaten some great flavour combinations but it all hung together because of its seasonality. We couldn’t have eaten this combination of dishes at any other time of the year. When we emerged after a couple of hours those tastes and sensations of the season put a spring in our step.

Smoked Haddock Croquettes were full of morsels of fish, but in perfect balance with the smoky, fishy sauce – this was real precision – so that there was something ephemeral to contrast with their crisp exteriors. If, as I think, a contrast between ephemeral and anything is a metaphysical poser, I suggest that metaphysicists head to Bermondsey for their evidence. Next came five roasted globe artichoke hearts atop a plate of lemon-laced goat’s curd, with sunflower seeds providing nuggets of contrasting texture.

Crab, Cucumber and Samphire Salad delivered more-than-ample sweet crab meat with crisp little gem, lightly pickled cucumber and strands of samphire. The samphire looked pretty, but what did it add given the power of the crab meat? I don’t really know but it added something because forkfuls with and without were different. Asparagus and Ham Buckwheat Pancakes with Béarnaise were lovely. Two asparagus spears in each pancake wrapped not in prosciutto as any mention of wrapping brings to mind but in wafer-thin smoked Yorkshire Ham. And the béarnaise worked: the pancakes were not smothered, which would have been too much, but there were enough blobs and smears to moisten them. A few tarragon leaves emphasised the complementary flavours.

We ordered those four dishes to be going on with and when they were done we settled for just one more – Ox Hearts with Cornish New Potatoes and Horseradish. The thickly-sliced ox heart was beautifully pink inside – it looked like slices of beef fillet, but with the density and gaminess that can only be heart. The horseradish was in a well-balanced cream that streaked through the new potatoes and was just enough to be a condiment to the heart.

Innovation in food can mean complexity, sometimes too much complexity. In Maltby Street’s case it means brilliant cooking, actually pretty simply presented, but with new flavour combinations and little twists that show just how much thought lies behind each dish.

With this standard of cooking, what more could you want? How about some of the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic service we have encountered. There’s a long (natural) wine list from Gergovie Wines and I was drawn to the Slovenian whites (actually orange), having been impressed with Slovenian wines when I was in the country a few years ago. The wine list gives nothing away and so I asked the woman who took our order for advice. She held forth for several minutes about the five wines, their grapes, the production process, the styles and what foods they worked with. Her enthusiasm was infectious. We opted for a bottle that was almost rosé-like – the most ‘way out’ she said – made from pinot grigio and with layers of complexity that meant it worked well with all our dishes, including the ox hearts. There were times we could have been drinking a chilled light red, at other times the food brought out the floral flavours, and sometimes it became more bracing.

There has been an odd tendency in some places to describe service as curation. Such pomposity is certainly not in order at 40 Maltby Street, but service is not the right term either. It’s more like facilitation.

Of course it won’t work out this way, but we now feel like we need to visit 40 Maltby Street every few weeks. It will be the exception that proves the rule of our no reservations prejudices (well, here and Barrafina) and we are looking forward to some very careful scheduling and even then the stress of not knowing if we will be able to squeeze in or not.