Two salads were standouts: Spinach salad, with pear, a few too many cranberries, bacon, goat cheese and red onion, was pleasingly playful; the marinated beet salad with arugula, goat cheese, red onion and toasted almonds was its somewhat subdued equal. The Caesar was basic and only slightly overdressed.

Mussels cooked in Palm Ale, a Belgian beer, with chorizo, caramelized fennel and tomato sauce were plump and juicy, though diced sausage rather than golf-ball size chunks would have allowed the more subtle flavor of the seafood to make its presence felt — and would have elevated this dish from merely good to very good. The roasted red pepper hummus, black bean purée and baba ghanouj on the meze plate lacked flavor.

The cornmeal-crusted calamari suffered from its soft bed of arugula, quickly losing the seductive crunch of fried food, a deficit that not even the slow heat of banana and cherry peppers could erase. Another appetizer of pork belly fell short on several counts: too much fat, a forgettable tomato slice, a pleasant runny-yolked egg beneath a crusty batter sitting forlornly away from the pork. Also, it was served on an oversize cutting board with no rim to stop errant bits of food from going right over the edge. Pork cheek risotto was far better, though the rice was overcooked and the Granny Smith apple shards on top seemed too large. The flavor was deep, and would have really sparkled with a squeeze of lemon.

Main dishes followed a similar pattern. The Cubano burger, a thick beef patty layered with Swiss cheese, bacon, ham, dill pickles and mustard, was predictably delicious. Pan-seared Jail Island salmon was beautifully cooked, with a fine crust on the skin side giving way to succulence below, but it was the accompanying root vegetable hash that lured me to the dish. The Maine diver scallops were well seared, tender and juicy inside, but the pancetta risotto beneath them was overcooked and underseasoned. Shepherd’s pie was relentlessly rich and heavy, made with lamb shanks beneath creamed spinach and all topped with whipped potatoes; I craved some kind of lightness alongside.