The idea of an situating all-night eatery near the bus and railroad stations is an old one, but that was the South Street Diner. The idea of situating a rather posh bar-bistro open after-hours in the same location is riskier. News Café was originally going to be called News 24/7, but has already cut out Mondays and weekday breakfasts; it currently averages about 16/6. A vestige of the all-night idea is that the front desk sells out-of-town newspapers, magazines, sundries, and even jewelry. Still, the management has scheduled a lot of hours behind a challenging menu that includes not only traditional breakfasts but sushi and sashimi, sandwiches, barbecue, burgers, steak, fancy salads, nachos, lobster ravioli, smoothies, and as many as 10 desserts. Although they do some of these things reasonably well, the concept apparently hasn’t reached prime time, since recent weeks have featured all kinds of promotions.

Our first visit coincided with Wednesday "Ladies’ Night," a free three-course dinner with the purchase of one drink, a rather good deal even if you never touch the drink. They’ve since added free appetizers and complimentary valet parking during dinner hours on Thursday. I returned on a deserted Sunday night at about 9, and had an excellent if unusual dinner of sea-bass sashimi ($5.95), western omelet ($9.95), and chocolate mousse ($7.95). Each of these was so much better than anything five of us could’ve ordered on Ladies’ Night that I think the best time for News may be when the overstaffed kitchen isn’t doing a lot. Someone was still there to cut beautiful sashimi, interleaving the three slices of raw fish with paper-thin slices of cucumber, and decorating the plate with a vividly flavored leaf of shiso, a cleverly carved lemon, and the usual wasabi, pickled ginger, and soy sauce. Someone made a handsome omelet, with home fries made from creamy new potatoes. And someone cut a perfect pie-shaped wedge of feather-light mousse, with a wafer-thin layer of chocolate cake underneath and a little powdered cocoa on top. If you’ve always dreamed of eating this odd combination of foods from a deserted pink-granite bar, to the throbbing accompaniment of club music — well, this is your dream, at least until Sundays become free-sushi-with-beer-if-you-ride-up-on-a-Harley nights.

On the first Ladies’ Night (July 30), with lots of people showing up as early as 7 p.m., the News Café was kind of a mess. The same DVD of Sex & the City was playing over and over on a silent wide-screen TV. It’s not a show that makes a lot of sense without sound. Even if there were sound, you couldn’t hear it over the loud techno and louder people trying to talk over the noise of the loud rooms. Your choices were the front atrium, with greenhouse windows, actual plants, a view of the Chinatown volleyball court, and loud walls, ceilings, floors, and people; the darker back bar, which looked quieter but was actually louder; or the two little rooms with couches, which had their windows open to the street like bordellos in Amsterdam, but looked like the most fun.

The food is as herky-jerky as the concept. On the complimentary Ladies’ Night menu, a female can have a clever watercress salad done up as a bouquet in a vase of rolled cucumber slice, with a workable ginger vinaigrette and a few orange slices that taste like canned grapefruit; an overdone slice of grilled salmon on four underdone white asparagus; a pretty great garlic-potato cake; and a "very berry sorbet" that’s actually an ice cream that looks like blueberry but tastes like strawberry, and allegedly contains raspberry too. Still, I’ve eaten a lot worse for the price of a watery mojito ($7), or a Jolly Rancher ($8) — an egregiously sweet potation that tastes like watermelon syrup and vodka and contains an actual gummy candy, or even an overpriced but drinkable glass of Franciscan cabernet sauvignon ($9 glass/$35 bottle), with some actual flavor although structured as soft as, well, dating-bar merlot.

Being a guy and paying cash, I regret to say, is kind of a crapshoot. The "mountain of nachos" ($10.95) is certainly a best buy, with heaps of red and yellow tostadas, very decent guacamole, random jalapeño slices, yellow cheese, and lots of pico de gallo. Coconut shrimp ($10.95) come in servings of five, and though they have a nice coconut flavor, they are a lot smaller and greasier than they were at the Border Café. A regular shrimp cocktail ($12.95) is completely uninteresting and perhaps overpriced for four large but not intimidating shrimp.

Duck-breast salad ($14.95) is a nice job on a whole, rare duck breast, sliced into half-inch-thick slices, with a bit of raspberry sauce, a raspberry vinaigrette on the greens, and a few random red raspberries, in case you missed the idea. Boston sirloin ($12.95) was ordered medium, came medium-rare, yet reached the right level of doneness at the table. It was, however, a stringy and chewy piece of meat, but came with properly-cooked broccoli and superb smashed potatoes, which must be why it is a "Boston" sirloin — the potatoes, I mean.

A turkey club sandwich ($10.95) was so overstuffed with thin-sliced deli turkey I couldn’t taste anything else. It came with seasoned French fries that would have been quite good if served hot, and some coleslaw. Rigatoni with meat sauce ($10.95) is actually rigatoni with tomato sauce into which are cut up some meatballs. That’s bearable if you don’t order it with meatballs ($13.95), which are of course the same meatballs, which are overly dry-herbed to boot. It might be better with sausage ($12.95). Lobster ravioli ($14.65) would have been better without the crab sauce, which smelled fishy and old. The ravioli themselves are striped pasta with a bland filling

For dessert we tried a tiramisu ($7.95) that was a rather flat, mostly-soaked sponge cake, with a bit of coffee flavor and not enough custard. Crème brûlée ($7.95) was all custard, no crust. It’s certainly possible that I had all the lucky choices on a Sunday, and nearly five times as many unlucky ones on a Wednesday. Maybe the sushi chef and the omelet guy are unflappable even with a house full of loud ladies, and the chocolate mousse always cuts perfectly and tastes great. But I think we have a concept here that can survive anything but success, so you have to suppress your usual instincts and go to News Café only when it looks half empty.

A note to servers: in a loud restaurant when you sometimes cannot hear, a customer may ask if a cocktail can be made without alcohol. If that sounds like an order with alcohol, and you serve the drink, and the customer tastes it and says, "I meant to order it without alcohol," you do the following: a) insist that you heard her order the drink and leave the drink on the table; b) whisk the drink away and replace it with a non-alcoholic version; c) insist on charging for the drink; or d) bring over the manager? The right answer, of course, is b, but either of the other two answers is better than a. With a, the customer might just enjoy or ignore the drink, pay for it, and tip proportionately, but there is always the danger that the customer is a recovering alcoholic who will be very upset, the larger likelihood that the customer is under 21 (as was the case with our table), or the tiny but crushing possibility that the customer is an underage spy for the Boston Licensing Board or the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com