If you're going to run an Italian restaurant then you need at the very least a buxom Italian woman bellowing at her staff and an unshaven chef shouting back.You need lots of hustle and bustle, smells, noise and chattering tables, while huge oily dustbin lids of pizzas get passed over one's heads to the eager customers.

Anything less is a charade, and the main thing that separates the men from the boys, or the real Italian restaurants from the chains and their cheap imitations.

Polite waitresses serving you neat pizzas while piped music masquerades as atmosphere doesn't even come close, in my book.Which is why my visit to Mia Capri in Thame was such a success.

We may have been the only people in there but, regardless of the size of the audience, the theatrics still kicked off.

We were so late it was questionable whether we'd made last orders on a weekday lunchtime.

The waiter, who was so Italian he understood very little of what we were saying, consulted the chef - who was despondently taking down the Christmas decorations, and a heated debate began.

The chef, the Basil Fawlty of Capri, flounced off into the kitchen while shouting upstairs to 'her indoors' to come down and do some work, although I couldn't understand a word as it was shouted in a torrent of Italian.

Buxom Italian woman, often seen making up the pizza dough every morning through the restaurant window, emerged and took our pizza orders.

She made them up in front of us, tossing them into the oven as if she was baking biscuits.

Minutes later they were served sizzling hot and oozing with wonderful aromas. Superb.

And boy they tasted good, oily and garlicky.

This is what local Italian restaurants should be like.It turns out that Basil Fawlty is actually called Antonino (Tony for short) who, with his wife Lidia, has run the restaurant for the past 11 years after moving to Thame from Capri, the idyllic island off the coast of Naples.

SO WHAT DID YOU CHOOSE?

We started off with the daily specials, trying Tony's fungi salata which we shared. It was whipped up instantly and was very simple but charming, the fresh flavours of garlic and parsley standing out, a shared portion was more than enough for two.

Then Lidia's pizzas arrived, dulling the conversation as we got stuck in. The Mia Capri consisted of tomato, mozzarella, grilled vegetables, parma ham, artichokes, mushrooms and sweet peppers for £10.50, while the Napoletana was a simpler offering of tomato, mozzarella, capers, black olives and anchovies at £8.30.

VERDICT: Pretty pricy for pizzas, but the bill for two came to £35.40 with coffee, fizzy water and a glass of wine. Not cheap, but for all that razzmatazz, worth every penny