Epiphany is a dark, moody sort of bar-restaurant that would go even better with real ’50s cool jazz than with the techno-jazz it often plays. Inverting the usual arrangements, the dining room is a long passageway to the bar in back. The décor has a lot of black and some red, suiting both the Asian-fusion food and the intimate lighting. The menu has been cut back since the restaurant opened, and now has some rather effective small plates and entrées. I found Epiphany far more consistent than Peking Tom’s, but lacking the top notes and shtick that have propelled the latter to popularity. All fusion restaurants near Chinatown, and even Jer-ne at the Ritz, suffer by price/value comparison, but it's so much nicer to eat at Epiphany than at its unfused competitors that it wins a niche of its own.

Food starts simply with a basket of garlic toast and some eggplant spread. My favorite appetizer is the "mixed grill" ($9), actually two skewers of beef and pork (and onions and bell pepper) served vertically on a base of grilled pineapple. That pineapple was one of the first California-isms to break into contemporary cuisine, but it’s still surprising and delicious. The skewers feature excellent, tender marinated beef and rather good chicken chunks, with just a taste of fire.

I also like the crisp shrimp-and-tofu dumpling ($7), four slices of Malaysian-style stuff with a salty sauce and a garnishing sauté of bok choy hearts and carrots. Ginger-chicken spring rolls ($8) are actually more like soft Vietnamese summer rolls filled with minced chicken and vegetables; there’s not much ginger, but you can compensate with a mild, Thai-style peanut sauce. The Vietnamese originals are fairly bland as well, but have mint, and are dipped in a sweetened fish sauce.

A simple mizuna-greens salad ($5) is well flavored with cress and shredded carrot along with the feathery Japanese mizuna, and has a soy-based dressing with black sesame seeds. The only appetizer on either visit that seemed a little flat was grilled garlic-sesame eggplant ($8). The halved Japanese eggplants looked great, but didn’t taste like much. The "marmalade" of onions and tomatoes was a little better, but not up to the flavor of the average ratatouille. And the central dab of goat cheese was quite peppery and almost too salty to eat.

My favorite entrée was tea-smoked duck breast ($17), even when the kitchen ran out of breast and substituted duck leg on my second visit. The right one is a long breast in thin slices, barely smoked but with a nice sweet-sour glaze, a jade-green baby bok choy, and a cylinder of superb buttery jasmine rice with more of those black sesame seeds. Version two was a meaty leg and thigh, again more glazed than smoked, with oven-fried potatoes and beautiful Chinese long beans. Neither platter was inventive, but just-plain-good food always has a place.

Seafood risotto ($19) is all-Italian, from the saffron-shrimp undertones to the just-cooked asparagus, scallops, and tender shrimp. This is a non-crunchy risotto, which I favor, with each grain of rice nonetheless distinct despite lots of parmesan cheese in the mix. A shrimp-and-scallop stir-fry ($19) — a cylinder of rice balanced precariously atop a bowl of stir-fry — looked like a joke on vertical fusion food. Again, the seafood and asparagus were just cooked and wonderful, but the rest of the stir-fry had the old universal chow mein flavor of bean sprouts and soy sauce, and even the carrots weren’t crisp enough. One suspects that the dish was held to come out with the others, or that components were held as part of a system. But we found only one truly weak entrée, a badly overdone "pan-seared salmon" ($17), although I did like the onion jam and the potato pancake underneath.

The wine list at Epiphany is very interesting. The best glass we sampled was a large pour of gorgeous Duxoup — just power your way through the word out loud — syrah ($12), about as fruity a California big red as I’ve ever tasted. The 2001 Concannon "Righteously Rosé" ($7 glass/$28 bottle) reminded me of the petite-syrah rosé that that winery produced in the 1970s: dry, a little fruity, a somewhat vegetable nose, and excellent with food. I wish more California wineries would go back to dry rosés. Benziger fumé blanc ($8) is another French-style wine from California, this one in the dry-white style of a pouilly-fuissé or Sancerre. We also had a half-bottle of 2000 Trimbach riesling ($25 half-bottle/$45 bottle). These are sort of a dry French answer to perfumed German wines, but this one was served too cold. Coffee and decaf ($2.50) were good, not great. Tea ($2.50) is a variety of bags, which the diner must rush into a cup of hot water.

Desserts are not special, except for a flourless chocolate cake ($5) that has to be rated a best buy, although it’s suspiciously fluffy. Banana fritters ($5) are wrapped in spring-roll skins, which dominate the flavor, possibly because some of our bananas weren’t very ripe. The little stack of four logs, crossed two on two like a Boy Scout fire, makes a nice presentation, and caramel sauce is better than the chocolate sauce that used to come on banana fritters. Mango ice cream ($5) is three scooplets in a martini glass with a few perfect raspberries and a very under-ripe strawberry. It works because mango ice cream is intriguing and clears the palate. The same dessert with vanilla ice cream ($5) was much less effective.

Service was excellent, but not really tested since we were almost the only patrons on two weeknight visits. Because the restaurant wasn’t a summer success, it was often out of things — a bottle of a certain wine, the duck breast, the eggplant spread for the garlic toast on one visit, the beef and veal entrées, and some of the desserts. Let’s hope these lapses can be put down to late-summer doldrums, and that September will see Epiphany fill up properly and profitably. It is a nicer place to eat than anything cheaper, and a less expensive place to eat than anything nicer.

Robert Nadeau will be signing copies of his new book, The American History Cookbook, at Harvard Book Store in Harvard Square, Cambridge, September 16 at 6 p.m. He can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com