At the moment, things don't look too promising. We're going to the new Vesuvio restaurant, which is on the site of the former Café Lido, at Eighth and Fitzwater. The name "Lido" is still on the door, and there are posters advertising different musical acts that will be appearing there, on different nights of the week. Perhaps this is just a club? We gingerly open the door and see the bar, where all this musical activity is supposed to take place, and there are only two souls there. We're ready to leave when we are greeted most cheerfully by Michael D'Addesi (who, we note later, is listed on the menu as "consigliere"). He takes our coats, makes small talk about the weather (as if anyone talks about anything else these days) and shows us into the dining room, around the bend from the desultory bar.

This room, too, is almost empty -- just a square room with brick walls, white napery and votives on the table. My first surprise is the stemware, elegant, graceful glasses, for different types of wines, and not typical of your basic Italian restaurant. Then I note the menu, another atypical document, because it's much more sophisticated than I would have imagined. The name "Vesuvio" seems Neopolitan, but the food appears more Tuscan, Apulian, I don't know -- but here we will not be overwhelmed by a tsunami of red sauce.

The staff is very accommodating (it helps that we are the only people there) and knowledgeable about the foods listed. The coarse bread, from a supplier in Hudson, N.J., we're told, is delicious with a garlicky dip of hummus and white beans. We drink some Pinot Blanc by the glass while we explore our options. Incidentally, the wine list is quite reasonable and leans toward Italy; there's a Salice Salentino for $30. Should you not desire an Italian wine, there's a Malbec for $20 and an Opus One for $310.

Among the usual suspects, such as mussels and calamari fritti and salads, we do find a salmon carpaccio, but then spy wild boar sausage. It's served in a lusty brown pottery casserole, filled with spicy dark sausage links, whole crimini mushrooms and sautéed cipolline onions, those squat little Italian onions with so much flavor. The whole earthy dish is topped off with a film of basil zabaglione that tempers the spice and gives it a creamy edge.

Then there's foie gras with a pineapple glaze, which tells me someone in the kitchen is playing around with different ideas, and some of them are French. Meanwhile, we address a plate of luscious prosciutto, pink and fatty and not too salty, sprinkled with some fresh horseradish and parmegiano reggiano, and find that it's some of the best we've had in a long time. The waiter even brings us a plate of frico to try, and we dispatch that quickly too. Frico is simply a cracker made of shredded cheese (montasio, in this case) that is melted in a very hot skillet and hardened into an intensely cheesy, crispy cracker. With it is a little mixed salad with balsamic vinaigrette, a fine combination.

Our rigatoni puttanesca is rich and zesty, with the capers, olives, onions and whatnot that comprise this "whore's sauce." The pasta list is small and not terribly exciting, as if the chef wants to de-emphasize the expected dishes and concentrate on things that are unexpected.

Like a loin of lamb, coated with pepper and fanned before us in thick, rare slices, rimmed with black and drizzled with mint oil, a natural and very different way of bringing in the accursed mint jelly. The accompaniment of roasted beets, shiitake mushrooms and grilled onions does little to mitigate the sharpness of the pepper, however. Perhaps a bed of creamy polenta would be more fitting, and would soak up some of the Sangiovese reduction as well. A game hen, probably Cornish, maybe guinea, is perfect with braised root vegetables and an earthy mixed bean ragout with wild mushrooms. It also has the tingle of grilled radicchio, whose bitterness almost becomes sweet when fire is applied to it.

There's also a N.Y. strip, a pork chop and a veal chop, and that's about it. But all of them come with some secret little touch -- grappa cherry drizzle, sage oil, truffle essence. Is this chef a Frenchman in disguise? No, his name is Robert Leget-Sherman and he hails from ¡Pasión! -- maybe that explains the mixed heritage of his cuisine.

Under the fishes, they have seared tuna and arctic char, and something called blueberry bbq swordfish that comes with lime salad, sugarcane and zested crème fraîche that I don't think I can be convinced to try.

The cheese course is an always-welcome touch, but it is particularly banal. They should check with their neighbors, DiBruno Brothers, and make it worthwhile. Dessert, on the other hand, delights again, with a spectacular display of panna cottas -- lemon, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla -- all creamy and delicious. Or a polenta shortbread with fresh berries and basil, or a chocolate torte with port-soaked cherries -- tasting just like the chocolate-covered cherries of our youth. No tiramisu for Vesuvio -- they are obviously striving for bigger and better. With our coffee came crumbly, short, pine-nut cookies -- another nice touch.

What can I say? Sometimes you find the strangest things in the strangest places. Who would have thought that we would have found such a detail-oriented, worldly meal in such inauspicious surroundings. I assume that the bar does a big musical business on weekends, but they are advertising the wrong thing. What will make me come back is certainly not the bar scene, but the culinary experiments that are taking place in the other room.