Bill Hearld tries out a new eating experience in Selby.

AT LEAST 50 miles from the sea, yet I swear you could hear the waves the night we had a seafood overdose at Selby's Capri Italian restaurant. It's a cosy little eatery tucked away in the shadow of the very un-Italian Selby Abbey. And it is also fast-changing.

After gorging on the fruits of the ocean, I felt moved to complain. Not about the food, definitely no complaints there, but about the service.

It was brisk, efficient, polite and friendly. Too brisk, efficient, polite and friendly.

I reckon that when you go into an Italian restaurant you expect to have to wait and be gently insulted by swarthy waiters with a fatalistic Mediterranean shrug.

The two English waitresses were stressfully impeccable.

And I happened to mention that there was still too much of an English tearoom aura - magnolia walls and wicker furniture - about the restaurant which started up last February on the premises of...an English tearoom.

In the short time since I made those comments, the English girls have moved on - now there's Italian head waiter Dino - large terracotta pots have moved in and the wicker has been replaced with more Continental furniture.

"We took your advice and made it more Italian," said head chef Pasquale Russo, who set up the Capri with wife Jennifer after they had honed their skills working in Bermuda, Switzerland, the United States and Italy. Pasquale's route to Selby was also via Gepetto's at Helmsley where he was head chef.

All right, so you want to know about the food. Delicious, well-presented, inexpensive and varied, from pizzas to pasta to salmon, sirloin, pork or chicken.

But the emphasis is on wholesome, simple southern Italian fare where the population is poorer and tomatoes are cheap and available.

Appetisers range from £3.25 to just over a fiver and in ocean-going mood my vegetarian guest went for calamari fritti, an ample helping of fried squid rings with tomato dip (£4.25) and no sign of the rubbery texture served up in some restaurants.

I also went all piscatorial and ordered fresh mussels - a steaming, half-ton mound of mussels in shells cooked "the Italian way" in a tomato and white wine sauce.

Within three lightning minutes, barely a chance to sample the purple, fruity delights of a bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (£9.95), we were into the main course. Seafood, of course.

I sated on Fettucini del Golfo di Napoli from the specials board at £7.95, pasta with langostine, mussels (again) and mixed seafood in a pink sauce. Hmmm.

The helping was ample and the tomato-based sauce avoided that Italian creamy richness which overfaces you half way through.

The lady went for Risotto Pescatore, with fresh seafood "morsels", fresh tomatoes and garlic with a touch of chilli. And it was all topped by a well-endowed tiger prawn which lay there seductively whispering "eat me."

We were too pleasantly stuffed to go on to the desserts but we could have been tempted with such as Capri pie (biscuit cake with ice cream) chocolate orange bomb, profiteroles and Italian ice cream cake, all at £2.95.

Our bill, including wine, was a reasonable £33.05. The most expensive item on the menu is sirloin steak at £11.50.

Capri, named after Pasquale's home island, and bedecked with pretty pictures of the place for when he gets homesick, can seat 25 downstairs and about the same upstairs.

The restaurant is open Monday to Saturday for lunch (11.30am to 2.30pm) and Tuesday to Saturday for evening meals, from 5pm to last orders at 9.30pm.

The fairly early closing time means the restaurant is not used as an after-hours watering hole.

Between 5pm and 6.30pm, the Early Bird menu offers any pizza or pasta for £3.95.

Between 9am and 4pm, Capri is now also open as a coffee shop.

After six months, the much-needed restaurant is taking off, and is popular with after-work parties, so it is advisable to book, especially on Fridays and Saturdays.

Capri Italian Restaurant, Abbey Place, Selby. Tel 01757 706856.

PICTURE: Jennifer and Pasquale Russo inside Capri