dining out

Odessa (781) 326-0000 350 Washington Street, Dedham Open Tues–Fri, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 5–10 p.m.; Sat, 5–10 p.m.; and Sun, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10 p.m. Di, MC, ViFull bar Parking lot Ramp access

Odessa is not just another name on the map. Read a little and you’ll discover it’s the birthplace of Isaac Babel, the early Soviet Maupassant of Jewish gangsters and Leninist Cossacks. It’s a southern city, with a raffish Miami aroma of the port and the black market. And it’s an ancient city, multicultural with a bad attitude. Odessa is certainly a strange name for a restaurant in Dedham, one of the least distinctive suburbs of Boston, but there it is, plunked in a large bar-restaurant space a few blocks from the Norfolk County Courthouse. At dinnertime it is, in fact, a quiet and tasteful restaurant with a combination of Russian-Ukrainian and continental food that will please many Dedhamites, and anyone else with a good appetite. And though we experienced a Soviet-era service lapse, our servers came frequently to explain and apologize.

The dining room is a little more formal than the customers, with napkins folded into fleurs-de-lis, real flowers at each table, candles, and framed prints. Wine tends to be served before appetizers, and we took a chance with the 1995 Mukuzani ($30), the only dry Russian red on the list. The theory is that a Russian wine with a name ending in i is apt to be Georgian, and thus pretty good. Sure enough, Mukuzani is in Georgia. Made from the saperavi grape, the wine is a rather nice, light red with some astringency and berries in the nose.

The bread is quite good, and that was helpful during the 30-minute wait for appetizers. " Authentic Ukrainian Borscht " ($5) is a bowl of the vegetarian kind of cabbage-onion borscht, garnished with a brilliant stuffed puff pastry of cabbage and shredded carrots. Siberian meat ravioli ($8) are beefy steamed dumplings rather like the momos in Tibetan restaurants, served with sour cream.

Wild-mushroom strudel ($6) is presented like spring rolls in one of those trendy fusion restaurants — two rolled strudels with mushrooms inside and a mushroom sauce outside.

If all this has you thinking gloomy violin music, there are dishes like the bronzed-shrimp-and-scallop skewers ($10), which are served Yucatecan-style with corn-pepper relish and a very spicy green hot sauce. Maybe Odessa and Cancún are sister cities.

One waits longer for entrées, but the Mukuzani helps quite a lot. Tenderloin of beef Stroganoff ($17) is cut small in the classic sour-cream sauce and served over bow-tie pasta, but with a fine julienne of carrots and squash that brings it rather up-to-date. Braised lamb plov ($14) is an even bigger boon for meat-lovers, a large lamb shank overcooked just right in a red-wine sauce and served over four crescent-shaped potato pierogies. The julienned vegetables come with this one too. My only confusion was that I thought " plov " was the same as " pilaf, " and expected rice. But I’m not complaining.

Roasted lacquered duck ($17) isn’t as crispy as expected, but has plenty of tender and moist duck meat, sweet-and-sour cabbage, and the underlying spätzle — think eggier, kibbled gnocchi — certainly satisfied. Russian pork shashlyk ($14) is a lighter kebab than I expected, with irresistible oven-fried potatoes and a homemade cabbage slaw.

Desserts are quite a treat. The " Tea for Two " ($12) is a pot of real Darjeeling leaf tea, served with a considerable heap of cookies decorated with candied cherry, strawberry, and apricot. The almond tulipe ($6) is an impressively curved, lipped tuile "bowl" filled with ice cream. I found the bittersweet-chocolate-mousse cake ($5) rather dry and essentially mocha. Classic New York cheesecake ($5), the only dessert not made at the restaurant, is well selected: it’s the real deal.

The $6.99 lunch buffet is an outstanding deal for the hungry, featuring a Russianized salad bar, two kinds of borscht, numerous meatballs, stuffed cabbage, mashed potatoes, and two kinds of fancy cake.

The service problems seem to be in the kitchen, as our server was helpful and accurate, and an owner also came to talk to us. The kitchen certainly performed well between delays, so the pace may simply be a matter of slow food.

The pseudonymonous Robert Nadeau has a cookbook, The American Ethnic Cookbook for Students (Oryx, $32.50), published under his real name, Mark Zanger, available in bookstores and online. Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.