Aficionados of the Sunset Grill will recall that its key food group is beer. The food is good with beer. By itself, the eats would not win any prizes, but with more than 100 available beers, it is excellent cheap food. That’s basically the story at the new Sunset Cantina, despite the quasi-Mexican name, enormous menu, and full liquor license, which has inspired the owners to collect tequilas the way they collect beers. The most important statistic about the Sunset Cantina is 38 taps, and what I’m going to tell you about the food and atmosphere is mostly about how to fit a restaurant around a lot of beer. I personally think this is what eluded the management of the previous restaurants in this space, Pete’s Bar and Grille and Caffe Lampara, although Pete’s came closer to getting it right.

For anyone with 38 taps and a highlighter in hand, this is what will get you through the midterm. 1) Keep it loud. Beer goes with rock and roll. 2) Collect beer-advertising materials. They’re designed to sell beer, after all, and collections of coasters, trays, labels, neon signs, and whatnot look like décor but still pack a message. 3) Collect beer premiums. While you’re up the ladder, hang up that Amstel Light boogie board, Rolling Rock bicycle, Cerveza Sol canvas chair, and even that Labatt Blue kayak. 4) Any other décor can be pretty juvenile too. You got a giant ice-cream cone? Go for it.

Section II, the food. Well, you’re thinking meat and potatoes, and you’re thinking salt and hot pepper, right? These are good, but to step above the rest you need a bit more creativity. For example, shrimp, spinach, and boursin-stuffed potato skins ($8.95). This is not a combination that would occur to everyone, but with small sweet shrimp it is very good eating, and with six on a plate and beer, it could be all you need to eat.

Since the general idea is to have every kind of beer-friendly food, the Cantina offers several variations on potato skins, many kinds of fried foods, three nacho plates, four kinds of chicken wings (some at four levels of hotness), variants of chili, flatbread pizza, and quesadillas five ways, not to mention soups and salads. Survive all that appetizing, and you are ready for burgers (26 toppings, 18 named combinations), steaks, seafood, pastas, fajitas, " sangwiches, " bigger salads and quesadillas, and melts. I think there are three kinds of peanut-butter sandwiches (each with optional banana, 60 cents) listed to pad the menu. That’s what I think.

Among the wings, boneless Buffalo wings on a stick ($8.50) are an interesting stunt. The kitchen doesn’t actually bone out the chicken wings. That would be too hard. Instead, it sets up breast meat shaped like popsicles, deep-fries it (still more healthful than skin-on wings), and puts on the hot sauce. Even the " no-nukes " strength is pretty spicy, but seven of these make for a lot of appetizer. More reasonable is the Mediterranean flatbread pizza ($7.95), with bits of artichoke, red pepper, and sun-dried tomato under a blanket of mozzarella, even if the flatbread is suspiciously like a flour tortilla.

Among the main dishes, I’d suggest something like the tropical swordfish tips ($14.95), a choice based on the " 3 Amigos Tips Sampler " ($15.95) — which is about enough food for three friends in any language. The swordfish tips come with an orange-mango tang. The steak tips are chewy and highly flavored with a sweet-hot barbecue sauce, and the turkey tips are nicely charred with a sweet-mustard marinade. Entrées come with a choice of side dishes, of which my favorites are the sweet (potato) fries, potato salad, mashed potato of the day (caramelized onion on our day), or the black-bean/corn salsa. I found the red-bean rice bland, and the curly fries were good but not special.

The " like buttah " Delmonico steak ($15.95) was not like butter, but neither was it " like rubbah. " It was like a large but thin overcooked rib steak, on a sauce of wine and sautéed onions, peppers, and mushrooms. The blackened-chicken quesadillas ($10.95) didn’t have too much chicken, but grilled cheese on flatbread never fully disappoints.

At lunch, you will be tempted by the taco and fajita bar ($6.95), and it’s a great buy if you don’t eat everything on the counter. For example, you could stick with taco shells (the only maize flatbread I could find in the " Cantina " ) over flour tortillas, and the chili-like ground beef (or the cumin-inflected chicken fajita sauté, or the beef-tips fajitas, but not all three mixed), and the pico de gallo (which has cilantro) over the salsa (which doesn’t have cilantro and tastes canned). You can add all the trimmings — like onions, tomatoes, olives, jalapeño slices — you want, and all the fruit garnishes, too. I also liked the Californian cobb salad ($9.95), because the chicken was cut into much bigger cubes than usual. Don’t get the oil-and-vinegar cruets as dressing, however, until they contain better olive oil. With inch-cubes of iceberg, avocado, bacon, and turkey, it looked like Picasso and Braque took a break for a Cubist club sandwich. I don’t advocate the eggs Benny ($9.95), despite the caramelized-onion home fries, because the cheese sauce and thin-sliced ham are inferior components. Likewise, the " Tijuana Turkey Sangwich " ($6.95) was a wrap with too much emphasis on too thinly sliced turkey breast.

Getting back to the taps, I took the opportunity to compare Samuel Adams Boston Lager with its model, Pilsner Urquell. They’re very close, as the Czech classic seemed a little cleaner than it used to be, while the current batch of Sam is not so strongly hopped as it used to be. Both are, of course, dry-hopped lagers made entirely from real malt. The coffee ($1.99) is served in an immense cup, but tinged with cocoa.

I tried two of only five desserts. The clear winner was Key-lime pie ($4.95), a classic version, plenty sour, distinctively Key lime, and not too tricked up. " Havana Banana Bomb " ($4.95) was oversize and creamier, but I thought the liquor-soaked bananas rubbery, and the cake flavored mostly by liqueur.

Service at Sunset Cantina is decent, but the loud music that makes the space work leads to some scrambled orders. Servers probably will learn to warn smaller patrons about the large portions, but they effectively doggie-bag the leftovers. They don’t yet provide suitable bags for multiple trays, however.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com