Many Cantabrigians will be confused by the name, which to them means a language of West Africa. Is there a new Senegalese restaurant in town? How nice. But no, our waitress tells us the name came to the designer in a dream, in Paris. If so, it was several years ago, because the owners of the surrounding boutique Hotel Marlowe have also had a Bambara restaurant for almost four years in Salt Lake City, where these confusions are less likely. (Remote control also shows in the decision to use a street address no local will recognize, even though the hotel is next to the CambridgeSide Galleria and can be reached directly from the mall’s inexpensive parking lot. The Web site directions, however, send you around five blocks via Cambridge Street and Msgr. O’Brien Highway.) A third misdirection is the descriptor " American brasserie cuisine. " Brasserie means brewery, but this is not a brewpub, and doesn’t even have taps for draft. Pick up a dinner menu and the familiar headings have been replaced by dishes listed under " Crispy, " " Fancy, " " Soupy, " " Leafy, " " Mainly, " " Creamy, " and " Partly. " So where’s Snow White? Ah, here she comes with the grammar police, who insist that the adjective is " crisp " and the adverb is " crisply. "

Evidently Kimpton Boutique Hotels want to make sure the guests know they aren’t in Kansas anymore, and aren’t afraid to fracture geography, French, or grammar to that end. Meanwhile, we local foodies are more interested in what a boutique-hotel restaurant featuring some small plates by a chef who used to work at Blue Ginger is like. Well, it’s not a lot like Blue Ginger. It’s like a fancy bar, and you can make an expensive small-plate dinner out of the Crispies and the Leafies and the Fancies. We ate pretty square meals, pretty good, but pretty expensive. To get out of the mall for a drink — ideal.

It’s certainly a pretty place, on several levels and in the best of ’50s earth tones: yellow, gold, red, dark cherry, a little orange metal gauze. The sound is hard bop — saxophones with metal mouthpieces.

Dinner begins with an iron breadbasket featuring slices of good French bread and that softer raisin-nut bread I’ve been seeing this year, served with butter sprinkled with a little sea salt. More sea salt comes in both brushed-metal shakers and a geo-star-shaped open vessel.

If you’re doing small plates, the " steamed Prince Edward Island mussels cob smoked bacon escarole white beans " ($8) is very good stuff with a broth almost like Portuguese soup, the only weakness being the undercooked white beans. Grilled quail ($11) is a little like Blue Ginger in that the quail is skewered like satay, spiced lightly, and served with a fruit chutney. " Crispy brie and wild mushroom dumplings black vinegar dip " ($7) is a lot like Blue Ginger in that the Asian-style dumplings are upscaled with shiitake mushrooms in the stuffing, deep-fried for added richness, and accompanied by an Asian slaw. (The Brie didn’t register much in mine, but maybe it was a novel " crispy " Brie after all.)

A cup of tomato bisque with mini grilled cheese sandwich ($7.50) is truly excellent soup — creamy and peppery and full of tomato flavor — but it comes with a truly silly half-sandwich, exactly as it tasted in the 1950s. The soup is served on a triangular plate, so you know the kitchen thinks it’s silly, too.

A salad of mixed greens with " crispy " fried leeks ($7) is perfectly nice but overpriced. The batter-fried leeks are crisper than onion rings, and a nice foil for salad, but not really a two-dollar garnish. On the other hand, an orzo-vegetable salad ($4), listed with the side dishes under " Partly, " is fully wonderful, featuring sweet cherry tomatoes, diced red bell pepper, and lots of onions with the rice-shaped pasta.

The vegetarian of our party was wary of the only vegan entrée, spring-vegetable stew ($15), and asked for a plate with two side dishes from other entrées, the parsnip purée from one platter and some mustard greens from another. This was agreed to at $4.50 per side dish, and made a fine entrée, with the rich parsnip mash underlying fresh baby mustard greens like a bitey-tasting salad.

But the spring-vegetable stew is actually excellent, held together with a broth scented with chives and tarragon, and incorporating fresh peas, snow peas, asparagus, slices of Jerusalem artichoke (looks like potato, tastes a little like artichoke), green beans, baby carrots, and onions — all dabbed with a little hollandaise sauce, since we’ve been good.

That " oven glazed duck breast " ($23) was a sound reading, the breast sliced nicely and served medium as ordered, with a cylinder of wild-rice pilaf, some spinach, and a garnish of blood-orange slices. A lamb shank with parsnip purée and spring peas ($19) was brilliantly cooked to a surpassing tenderness and flavor, while parsnip purée was even better with meat, but the spring peas didn’t have the garden-fresh flavor to justify the effort of cleaning and cooking them.

The wine list, organized on a spectrum of lightness versus richness, jumps quickly into the higher prices, but has some winners below $30, such as our Terrazas Reserva Malbec ($28) from Argentina. The list says 2000, but we were served the 2001. Well, it’s a spring vintage down there. Good Argentine malbec tastes the way minor Bordeaux used to taste before California technology made every red wine in the world taste like dating-bar merlot. Such a brasserie is this that our waitress couldn’t list the beers, but a good guess would be Harpoon IPA ($5.25) for this food. Espresso ($2.75) and decaf ($2.25) are excellent.

Bambara is heavily invested in desserts, and they are very good. My favorite is passion-fruit crème brûlée ($6.50), which really packs the characteristic flavor of orange passion fruit into every bite, and has a ribbon of cinnamon pastry for contrast. There’s nothing weak about the " slow baked El Rey bittersweet chocolate cake " ($7), a fallen chocolate cake with cocoa whipped cream and a chocolate-tuile sail, in case you don’t get the hint. The " fudgy brownie " ($6.50) is very close, and some will prefer the contrast of vanilla ice cream. If you can’t have chocolate, you can have the rustic pear tart ($7) with excellent flavors (pear, pastry, and candied-pear sauce), even if it does look like a large hamburger rolled in sand.

Service was excellent, with one odd twist. The design has each table topped with paper on top of the linen, perhaps to convey informality. But the system had our waitress sweep the paper for crumbs after every course. Although new, Bambara fills up nicely, but late and from the bar out.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com