dining out

Dolce Vita Ristorante (617) 720-0422 221 Hanover Street (North End), Boston Open daily, 11 a.m.–11 p.m. CB, DC, MC, Vi Beer and wine Sidewalk-level access, but bathrooms downstairs

As yuppified as the North End becomes, it still stirs up flavorful memories. I park the car in a lot off Cooper Street and walk back toward the restaurant, and the aromas begin to work. Not just garlic frying in olive oil, but the garlic aroma fixed by anchovy and lemon. By the time I reach Dolce Vita, I am ready to ignore the tourist-trap name (for the Fellini film of Romans). I am ready to ignore the ubiquitous Gipsy Kings tape — so 1998. I am ready to be carried along by owner Franco Graceffa’s hands on my shoulders, his enthusiastic touting of the menu, the waiters with accents, even the sight of an ancient copper espresso caldron, the kind with a brass eagle on top and a long handle to pull the steam through the grounds. (This antique is not actually in use, but the sight of it evokes the old North End for me.)

And in fact, I am carried along through a resolutely mediocre and overpriced dinner. This column has always focused on food, but sometimes an evening is shaped more by the fun than the food. If you like that kind of evening, Dolce Vita could be your restaurant, and with some careful reading of what follows, you can also eat pretty well there.

I would say that your ideal meal might be something like the combination appetizer ($8.50), followed by the gamberi pesto ($17.95) and then one of the gelati ($4.45) with cappuccino ($1.50). The wine list is more of a problem, despite a remarkable string of four fine vintages in Italy since 1996. Dolce Vita has some of these Italians, and some California counterparts, but the house goes for an extremely soft style of wine in the mere five vintages offered by the glass, to judge from our tastings of the Rutherford merlot ($8) and the only Chianti sold by the glass ($8). Given the loudness of the room and the tendency of people to smoke at the bar, it’s not a dinner for tasting wine anyway, so if your party is supportive, order the cheapest bottle of red and/or white, and don’t be afraid to put ice in it.

I recommend the combination appetizer largely on the quality of the two rolls of eggplant, although the two stuffed-mushroom sandwiches were nice too. The shrimp pesto wasn’t really pesto (no walnuts to make paste), but it was well flavored, the shrimp weren’t overdone, and the restaurant has a good system for main-dish pasta. You probably could get away with any of the seafood extravaganzas except the one I had, a risotto pescadore ($22.95), which suffered from the problem that undercooked long-grain rice does not develop the creaminess that defines risotto. The Graceffas are from Sicily, and risotto, like pesto, is a Northern Italian thing. The owners have given good instructions about seafood, and the shrimp, littleneck clams, and squid in my dish were all correctly cooked, with the mussels being especially tasty.

Things generally begin with a basket of crusty white bread, enhanced by packaged butter if you are an old-timer, by a pour of flavored olive oil if you are under 40, or by the juices of a dish of cured black olives if you are really smart. The menu appetizers are very typical — the whole menu seems based on tourist standards with expeditions into market seafood. But in fact the mediocrity seemed almost universal. The soup of the day was “minestrone” ($4.50), but this had a weak tomato broth and a few underdone kidney beans, and was mostly thin ribbons of pasta. A special on grouper ($25.95) was overcooked fish with a thin red sauce and simply steamed vegetables (green beans, cauliflower, carrots). Sole francese ($15.95) was fresh fish, but such a thin fillet I could taste only the eggy batter. Gamberi primavera ($15.95) had the same good pasta and shrimp as the pesto version, but few vegetables and a nondescript white sauce (can’t blame this on Sicilian upbringing: pasta primavera is not really an Italian dish at all). The only other entrée I liked was veal saltimbocca ($16.95), a little browned and tough, but flavorful and with a good balance of ham and sage. It came with the same dreadful steamed vegetables as the grouper, but this guest had the luck to order a side of garlicky sautéed spinach ($4.50), which was very flavorful.

Desserts are a specialty — when was the last time you saw an Italian menu with 17 desserts and 12 flavors of gelato? Maybe the name Dolce Vita doesn’t refer to the movie after all. I steer you to the gelati after sampling a divine vanilla served with strawberries, and a lovely stem glass of sorbet-like lemon served with a twist of lemon. The other desserts are probably purchased at a North End bakery, since they range from napoleons to sfogliatelle ($3.95) — the fan-shaped pastry North Enders used to eat with coffee after Mass. But all the desserts tended to come decorated with the same swirls of whipped cream and halved strawberries. This was okay with a layered chocolate espresso cake ($4.50), but ludicrous on a crème caramel ($4.75), which was almost too soft to be distinguished from the whipped cream. A chocolate-covered cannolo ($4.25) was crisp and filled with a bright ricotta filling, but it might be even better without the chocolate covering ($2.95). I was quite taken with a chocolate éclair ($3.95), which had a filling more of liqueur than custard. Cappuccino is a bargain at $1.50, and nicely done either in decaf or for real.

Service at Dolce Vita is quite good, and very friendly even when slow. The space is a new one, 50 feet up Hanover Street from the original Dolce Vita, and several notches upscale. Café doors will open the room to the street in good weather. For the spring, however, the restaurant can’t decide whether to keep the door open and have a draft, or close it and accumulate smoke. The bar has no real separation from the dining room, and ceiling fans only blow the smoke back down. My suggestion would be to find a sentimental equipment dealer and swap the espresso tank for a modern smoke eater. The other atmospheric problem is high-frequency noise; often enough clank bounces off the floors, windows, and high tin ceiling to drown out the background music. The décor combines photos of happy clients with bright, modern Italo-American paintings. See if you can figure out what the two carabinièri are looking over.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.