The Italian restaurant named the best in Nottinghamshire that attracts people from miles away

It's not posh and there's no frills, just really good food and service and a family-friendly atmosphere at the Italian restaurant voted Nottinghamshire's best. It's just over two years since the Carpenters Arms Italian Kitchen descended upon Walesby - a village known for its forestry and annual scout camp.

A rundown pub that didn't reopen after the pandemic is now a destination for food lovers, who can't get enough of the flavours of the rustic dishes - just ask a couple who holidayed nearby and ate there eight times in seven days. As well as the locals, diners travel from Nottingham, Lincoln, Newark, Derby and Leicester.

"We've got absolutely tremendous local and regular guests. Then there's people who routinely make a two or three-hour round trip to get to us," said John Boddice, who runs the restaurant with his wife Louise and Italian chef and friend of 25 years Christian Colarietti.

The passion that goes into the food coupled with the friendly service has made the Carpenters Arms the county's best-loved Italian restaurant with Nottinghamshire Live readers, who voted for it in their hundreds in our recent poll. City centre pizzeria Pizzamisu was runner-up and La Storia in West Bridgford came third, with Amores in Beeston and Venezia in Upper Saxondale also featuring in the poll.

John, who is Mansfield-born and bred, and Christian, who hails from Rome, create an ever-changing seasonal menu. Current dishes range from crab-filled pasta to long-tubed paccheri with braised lamb shoulder and olives.

Saltimbocca, made with chicken instead of veal, and sage, porchetta (crispy pork belly) and smoked cod with pea and lemon risotto appear in the 'secondi' section. John said: "We very rarely look around. We don't compare ourselves to anybody, we don't copy anybody, we don't follow any trend or any fashion. We just cook what we want to do and we also just try and treat our guests like we want to be treated when we go out.

"We have tried to make this place how hospitality used to be 20 years ago. It's like everybody wants to try and be a brand, everybody wants to be an internet superstar. We're just happy coming to work, cooking really nice food and speaking to nice guests. We're here because we like cooking and it's really nice that people like eating it.

"Everything's very rustic, there's no frilly garnishes, nothing's styled, so all the photos that you see on Instagram, most of them are the staff lunches. We feed the staff whatever we are cooking at that moment, they get to eat it and photograph it and send us the photos on Whatsapp and we chuck them on Instagram.

"There is never any 'make it look pretty and tart it up'. What you see on Instagram and Facebook is literally what you get in the restaurant on the plate. It's just comfortable, it's not posh, it's not stuck up, it is really low-key, friendly and hospitable."

Christian and John make their own bread, salamis, 'nduja sausage, ricotta cheese and pasta and cure their own pancetta. The herbs are grown in the pub garden and a lot of the fresh produce comes from a plot of land in Mansfield, looked after by John's parents.

"We grow probably 100 different fruit and veg. There's 20 kinds of tomatoes, five kinds of beetroot, borlotti beans, ten kinds of pumpkins, cavolo nero and tropea onions," said John, who was never in any doubt that his own restaurant would serve Italian cuisine.

"It's just an amazing way of cooking, it's really simple. It's just about the quality of ingredients and making sure that every ingredient is used to its best. It's super seasonal. We changed the menu six times last month."

The basics, such as potatoes are supplied by a veg man ten minutes up the road. "He's getting stuff locally as good as we can grow so there's no point in us growing it," said John. The multi-coloured carrots and cauliflowers are tended to by the Boddice's six-year-old son Roger, a young chef in the making.

"After school my wife Louise will bring him down and he'll potter round the dining room talking to guests and he'll come in the kitchen telling us we've not swept up property. On a Monday when the restaurant is closed and we do maintenance, we'll cook lunch there. He'll bring his chef whites and he'll roll fresh pasta for us and fill all the ravioli," said John.

One Italian favourite you won't find on the menu is pizza. "We have a pizza oven at home that we use on days off but we've made a conscious decision not to do it because everybody does pizza. When we are in Italy, pizza's a snack, you don't go out for dinner to have pizza, and we're really wanting to create the trattoria style of dining we like, which is just rustic home-cooked food and pizza doesn't really fall into that wheelhouse.

"It seemed a bit disingenuous chucking it in because it's Italian. We don't need it, it makes us a little bit different. Every pub within ten miles of us does pizza. What's the point?" said John.

The three-roomed restaurant still has the look of a traditional pub. It's clean and well-kept, but there's no fancy décor. "We spend the money on things that matter like making sure we've got a good team, good booze, great wine and good food," said John. "An old manager once said to me, if a bride remembers what colour the carpet is on her wedding day, you've failed."

A basic but standout on the menu is bread. The chefs make around 200kgs of plain or tomato and olive focaccia a week. A labour of love, it takes four days to prove. Production is ramped up at this time of year ready for Christmas deli takeaway orders. Customers can pre-order homemade bread, sausages and salami for their festive feasting.

"Last Christmas Eve we did 220 kilos of bread, 85 metres of sausage and 30 kilos of salami. This year we had requests so we're also doing pigs in blankets, oven-ready turkey and roast potatoes - people love them because we slightly smoke them."

Salsicce Toscana, traditional sausages from Tuscany with pork, wild boar, fennel and lemon, are made in-house. "We can't get the right quality of sausage over in the UK so we just make it ourselves. It's really traditional this time of year but it's very hard to get the good quality stuff since we left the EU. The small producers won't export it because it's just not worth the hassle, so instead of buying poor quality or not doing it we've just made our own."

Although it will no longer be a secret now, John revealed that the Carpenters Arms does a pre-bookable secret tasting menu with five courses, each with five or six dishes put in the middle of the table in true Italian family style - all matched with wine.

"It's amazing food and just like when we dine out in Italy but it's really low key. It's not tiny bits of food where you're told what order to eat it in. You are taking doggy bags home."