It’s the cabinet of Nazi memorabilia that brings you up short. There you are at the Scottish Antique & Art Centre (SAAC) in Doune, browsing blamelessly. Doune, in case you don’t know, is one of those villages in Stirlingshire that should have a fruit scone on its coat of arms. It’s a place where even the pensioners have grandparents. The locals look as though they can remember Clement Atlee but not where they left the tartan shopping trolley.

And round these parts the SAAC is their Mecca or Lourdes, it calls to them with the siren song of the porcelain milk maid and the commemorative plate of George VI. It’s in a converted farmhouse off the A820, several thousand square feet of dead man's plunder and salvaged things made of bakelite. You wonder if the locals pick up their pensions then come straight here, in crazed pursuit of umbrella stands made from elephant feet and ancient soda syphons. Certainly it’s busy today; women in bulky purple bodywarmers go truffle-hunting through the shelves and cases while the husbands stand by idly, whistling to themselves and dreaming of seed catalogues. As in all knick-knackariums there’s one phrase you hear from the browsers more frequently than any other: “Oh! We used to have one of those!”

You don’t hear it so much at the Nazi cabinet, obviously. It’s a bit of a conversation-killer is a glass case full of Third Reich trinketry. No doubt in Hamburg and Vienna such a thing is as common as a 1950s Teasmade or a Tretchikoff Green Lady but, in Doune, it strikes an eldritch note amidst all the frou-frou fluffiness and sentimental sighing. Some dealer here has got the lot: swastika armbands, still vividly red; iron crosses; well-preserved postcards of young blonde boys discovering their strength through joy. I couldn’t help wondering whether some dottled old Dounite had ever come here, stocked up, then burst through his front door in peaked cap and Obergruppenfuehrer epaulette studs shouting “Gracie love, remember when these were all the rage?”

Anyway, Cafe Circa. It’s the attached restaurant in the next converted farmhouse along, a purpose-adapted, exposed-brickwork haven of oldster comfort and country kitsch. The by-law which decrees that such places must cram their walls with gouache depictions of sandy white beaches in the Hebrides has been observed. Clearly it’s a place that represents the only action in town. It’s a little like a Western saloon: you suppose that should any person aged under 30 stray onto the premises, the Louis Armstrong CD will be turned off and the room will fall silent.

These kind of places invariably have menus longer than first editions of the Larousse Gastronomique, being determined to cater to every tourist whim possible. Happily, Cafe Circa doesn’t. It’s an older customer base here, with little need of triple-decker burgers. Instead, the fare features the mainstream staples of the tweedily contemporary Scottish, done plainly but with care. Starters offer a range of platters for sharing — seafood and ploughman’s and the like. The Scottish platter was a bowl of stovies, several triangles of ham hough and a game pate accompanied, oddly, by some sliced figs. The stovies were excellent, the pates unprocessed and it came with a little self-respecting salad; it was a dish designed for the nutritional requirements of its audience — a nibbly, shareable taste of the familiar.

Among the mains, the fishcakes were chunky, warming and well-presented, if a little shy on flavour and more crispily coated than the average denture finds commodious, though there was also a good lamb hotpot studded with mushrooms and sausages from the nearby village of Kippen, topped with browned potato discs. Dietary quirks were accommodated by a variety of vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options.

In all, then, it’s a well-judged and punctilious apres-antique pit stop in thrall to time-honoured catering principles seldom so well-observed in this neck of the day-trip woods. It isn’t quite a Fabergé egg lying in a box of broken Dinky toys, but it’s far from one of those dread antiques of out-of-town eating that closes 10 minutes into the lunch hour and specialises in deep-fried scampi. If you’re looking for a musty tartan carpet or a set of antlers, you’ll have to source them next door.

Cafe Circa, The Scottish Antique & Arts Centre, Carse Of Cambus, Doune, 01786 841 683, dinner for two with wine, £50

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