It all happens fast. Metro opened one fall and packed in a Cambridge crowd that couldn’t get enough of the French-type food and brasserie atmosphere. Or at least, for six months they couldn’t. The crowd had already moved on by the following summer (last summer), and chef Amanda Lydon and star pastry chef Lee Napoli left soon after. Now the owners have recast Metro as Giuseppe’s, apparently on the theory that Italian food is recession-proof and people never lose interest in spaghetti, even though steak frites and braised rabbit may be so 10 months ago.

The turnaround was so rapid that it took about a month to replace the French posters on the walls with random Italian-family pictures, and the bathrooms still said HOMMES and DAMES for about as long. Red-and-white-checkered tablecloths and Vic Damone/Tony Bennett tapes are a good start, however. Giuseppe’s is positioned to be cheaper than a French restaurant, but it’s still a little expensive for a trattoria. It makes up for that with very good cheap Italian wine. One way to pull off this trick is by using regional and non-vintage bottlings, which is the way much of middle-class Europe and England always drank wine. The American market has insisted on estate bottling and vintage years, like the expensive bottles, even for cheap wine. Thus our wine stores are filled with an impossibly large choice of small lots of second-rate wine, when for less money we could have had fewer labels based on reliable shippers blending across regions and vintages to make a consistent varietal wine. (Remember La Vieille Ferme?) This really came home to me with the Lurton (a reliable shipper) Les Salices merlot and sauvignon blanc on the Nightingale’s first list. Those wines are blended across a large and rather secondary region of France (Pays d’Oc). Yet they have more character and style than the estate-bottled Chilean, Italian, or even French wines of their type on most restaurant lists.

At Giuseppe’s, cheap wine is found the American way, by locating fine producers in out-of-the-way regions. Our Vobis Tua Barbera d’Asti ($21) came from a well-known red-wine appellation, but from the lesser-known Tortona Hills subregion. The winemaker (Cantine Volpi) gets a balance of acidity and softness into what is really an ideal red wine for most Italian food on the menu. A bottle of Rubrato 2000 ($21) comes from a small and little-known region of Southern Italy, but again the winemaker (Feudi di San Gregorio) made a clean if somewhat tannic red, this time from the ancient aglianico grape. Given the outlandish prices of wine in restaurants these days, I’d like to see more lists like the one at Giuseppe’s. Interestingly, wines by the glass here are a more conventional $6 to $10.50.

Food begins with fruity extra-virgin olive oil and a basket of crusty, glutinous bread with big holes. Just one kind of bread, which is all you need when it’s this good. We couldn’t resist an appetizer described as " Our signature meatballs " ($9.95). Does the whole team sign each meatball, or just the chef? We examined each meatball carefully, but the signatures must have been blurred by the marinara sauce. They’re two very good meatballs, the size of tennis balls, perhaps lightened with bread crumbs but not overly spicy, and dusted with parmesan cheese. Since Giuseppe’s has retro wine prices, why not spaghetti and meatballs back together? (Actually, the Italian way was to have the pasta course before the meatballs, but perhaps the chef wanted to get all the signature collecting out of the way before the real game action.)

Antipasto ($14.95 for two) is a handsome platter that could really serve as an appetizer for three or four people. A lot of things are familiar: hard and soft cheese, roast peppers, olives sautéed with vegetables, grilled eggplant and zucchini slices, pickled broccoli. And a few things are less predictable: bresaola (thin-sliced dried beef) and asparagus. Frittura di pesce ($9.95) is a good shot at a truly Mediterranean appetizer of fried small fish, here symbolized by two fried sardines, among three shrimp and a pile of squid rings, with lemon. (If you want to dip, borrow some marinara from the meatballs.)

Among the main dishes, the rack of lamb ($22.95) is something of a bargain, four very good small chops (rare to order) piled into an almost-asterisk. You can pay double essentially for fancier vegetables than Giuseppe’s simple sauté, or elaborate starches instead of oven-fried potatoes. Salmon stuffed with seafood ($19.95) is a very nice presentation, more baked than grilled and thus delectably plump without any char. A dish of spaghetti with red clam sauce ($15.95) features only four littleneck clams and not a lot of tomato, but the pasta itself is al dente. Another argument for the spaghetti and meatballs.

Vitello ai funghi selvatici ($18.95) probably isn’t the most expensive veal to begin with, and thus chewy though thin, but also a little more flavorful than the most expensive veal. The wild mushrooms, mostly portabellas, are quite good, and the only real weakness of the dish is a little too much grease in the sauce, and not enough residual Marsala.

Desserts are already improving from the opening menu. Cannoli alla siciliana ($5.50) are reasonably fresh, and the tiramisu ($5.50) is a creamy square of coffee and chocolate flavors. A torta al cioccolato ($5.50) was like a two-crust chocolate pie on our first visit, but was a rich chocolate cake when I returned more recently. A torta alla frutta ($5.50), my favorite dessert both times, was also evolving toward a more French style of pastry, like Metro used to have.

Coffee ($1.95), espresso ($2.25), and cappuccino ($3.75) are all very good, and water was poured frequently. Service generally was quite good despite confusion about the new menu and some out-of-stock wines (of which the recommended substitutions were a highlight of our dinner). I don’t entirely approve of the 18 percent automatic tip on parties as small as six, but the policy is stated on the menu. Although the space is not heavily modified, Giuseppe’s seems quieter than Metro, which was very, very loud. Maybe Italian food just relaxes the ears.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com