dining out

White Star Tavern (617) 536-4477 565 Boylston Street (Back Bay), Boston Open Sun, 11 a.m.–midnight; Mon, 5 a.m.–midnight; and Tues–Sat, 11:30 a.m.–midnight AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi Full bar Sidewalk-level access No valet parking

The emblem of Frank Bell’s Small Planet Café was a bar of rustic pine, politically correct because it was not an endangered rain-forest tree, yet it conveyed a hearty, open-handed gusto. The White Star Tavern continues the idea with tabletops of blond maple — still renewable American wood, but more elegant. Bell’s restaurants at this location, going back to the Back Bay Bistro in the early 1980s, have always expressed smart politics in an easygoing way, have always done advanced things with beer and wine, and have always attracted good help. The only thing I didn’t like about the Small Planet was the dull food. At White Star, Bell has answered that complaint — first with chef Ken Goodman, whose East Coast Grill experience spiced up the bar food considerably, and recently with Scott Pelletier, who has been adding more wine-friendly French cheffery to the dinner menu, while keeping lots of bar food, grillage, and fried objects.

You could wrap up the whole thing in a bowl of “vegetarian Vidalia onion & Yukon gold potato soup, Italian parsley oil” ($6). It sure doesn’t taste vegetarian, unless you consider cream permissible. The vegetables are in a satin purée, with a shimmering pepper undertone, like distant summer lightning. And then, in the middle, is a garnish of half a handful of buttermilk red-onion rings, still crispy, but already melting like tempura in a bowl of Japanese noodle soup. It’s great eating and great fun, and marries high and low cuisines with a world-beat reference in there as well.

The onion rings ($5) were on the menu when the place opened a year ago, and have been described as the best onion rings in Boston. Since they actually taste a little like sweet onions, I can’t disagree. They are cut into strings of rings, so there is a lot of crunch but also some evident grease if you let them get cold. Not to worry, though: you won’t find it hard to eat them all quickly. The current dip is like hotted-up mayonnaise. You might have some left for a sandwich later, or you might not.

For a sandwich, you could have something like grilled rosemary-garlic chicken with smoked bacon and jack cheese on a soft bun ($8), and that would be like eating bacon that wasn’t all bad for you. You have a choice of three side dishes at lunch (or with sandwiches at night), none fabulous. The French fries are probably the best choice, semi-skin-on and reasonably crisp with some potato flavor. The potato salad was all chunks of Red Bliss with dressing that didn’t do anything worthwhile, so munching those big chunks of potato felt kind of gross after a while. “Mango-infused slaw” was quasi-Korean and didn’t work either: too slushy.

“Buttermilk battered crispy red-hot chicken” ($7) is served with the mango-infused slaw, but this is not a major deterrent. Think very hot Buffalo chicken fingers, and you have it: four large ones, actually, with a good blue-cheese dip, but no celery.

Now for something really good: “Fennel-cumin dusted grilled skewered scallops, gingered-pea mashed potatoes” ($18). Forget all the dusts and ginger, which I couldn’t taste. This dinner is three excellent skewers of handsomely grilled sea scallops, piled on a seriously vertical mound of excellent mashed potatoes. Okay, the potatoes are a little green, but it doesn’t affect the flavor (buttery). There is a little sprightly sauce, which is supposed to be a lemon vinaigrette, but I sure couldn’t tell it wasn’t a genuine beurre blanc.

St. Louis–style ribs ($16) is another holdover that deserves a long-term contract. The ribs, a half rack, are falling-off-the-bone tender but have the flavor of having been rubbed and cooked over slow, dry heat, if not actually wood barbecue. The jalapeño corn bread has a balance of onions and chilies that works fabulously. The barbecue sauce is like liquid chutney, but that works too. The cole slaw on this platter is regular cole slaw.

A couple of things Pelletier could edit out. The soup on one day was roast pork, cannellini-bean, and fresh sage ($6). But the beans were small white beans, not the big soft cannellini that soak up sage flavor, had there been any. The pork was sliced, but the soup was peppered up to the edge of inedibility. An appetizer of fried squash blossom, zucchini-wrapped something-or-other (crab salad?), and salad had to rest on the latter, an arugula salad, because the other stuff was so mediocre.

White Star Tavern has a good list of beers (keep an eye on that 22-ounce Pilsner Urquell for me), and a very good list of half-bottles of wine, the kinds of roughish reds and acidic whites that stand up to the grilled menu; it will shine even brighter if it keeps Frenchifying. The desserts need some work, although we had a lot of fun with chocolate fondue for two ($8). It’s just chocolate sauce with chunks of pound cake, pineapple, and strawberry to dip into it, but we liked it. Rhubarb-strawberry cobbler ($6) has a lovely, freshly baked shortcake, almost a muffin top, but the fruit doesn’t survive the baking so well. Eat the ice cream.

The space is a duplex with ceiling fans whirling all the time. This mostly disperses the smoke from the bar, but not entirely. The seats in the booths are too soft, and one feels 10 years old because the table comes up to armpit height on people of average height. The sound includes some very good ’50s jazz and some mixed classic rock, and one time I heard the Meters’ “Hey Pocky Way,” a truly great song.

Taken as bar food, this is excellent stuff, with a promise of bistro success in that potato-onion soup. And the servers have a warm, friendly tone that may well carry White Star Tavern over the finish line to its goal of becoming a great Copley Square neighborhood bar.

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