Since the Boston Harbor Hotel’s Meritage was my favorite restaurant of all those I reviewed last year, the idea of former BHH dining-room staff setting up Vinalia along similar lines is welcome news. Even a junior-varsity version of Meritage would be good news, and Vinalia’s idea of a somewhat simpler and cheaper Meritage makes it even more accessible and nearly as grand. My only real criticism of Vinalia is that it’s too loud to taste everything. This is the heritage of a space, formerly Dakota’s, that’s wrapped oddly around an escalator. Although the official address is 101 Arch Street, and you can come in that way — walking through an odd atrium, like an alley stage-set under glass — it’s actually easier to find Vinalia by coming in at 33 Summer Street, opposite Macy’s. The people who already know how to find it are Financial District business lunchers and afterwork drinkers, who crowd the bar and watch sports and news on the plasma screens. Getting those people to stay for dinner is Vinalia’s business plan, but my sense of the concept is that food-and-wine lovers should sneak past the bar crowd for the excellent cuisine and more than 50 wines by the glass.

Wine is also available from an extensive list of bottles, but almost everything one can afford is too young to drink; the new team may have walked away with some of Meritage’s concept, but they’ve had to start their own cellar. Oversize red-wine glasses at least air the wine out well, but uneven pours mean that some whites are crowded and cold, making them hard to smell and taste. The good news with these young wines is that most are still on the market, in case you want to buy more.

Food starts with a hot, soft roll, with something of a pizza-flavored crust, and soft, salty butter. The appetizers include quite a bit of bar food along with the gourmet stuff. One of my favorites straddles the line: crispy fried clams ($8). Excellent belly clams, excellent frying job, superb hot-pepper mayonnaise, and enough mesclun to ease the conscience. I also like the tuna tartare ($10), a typical disc of raw tuna morsels atypically seasoned with capers and acidic micro-beet greens. Cider-tossed arugula with vine-ripened tomatoes ($6) comes with wonderful toasted walnuts.

But the real pick of the appetizers appeared on the four-course wine-pairing menu ($55): two pieces of sautéed lemon sole, meaty as real Dover sole, perfect with the Geyser Peak 2002 chardonnay, a white that has a very nice balance of fruit and toasty oak, especially considering that it’s barely a year old. This would be one wine to pick up for summer flounders to come.

The salad on the wine-pairing menu was "lolla rossa" (a speckled red lettuce) and heirloom tomatoes (in sliver-thin slices) with "crispy manchego bread" (a long slice of Melba-thin toast with melted cheese). This was the best bet for wine, which really doesn’t ever go with salad dressing. That said, the 2001 Lange pinot noir was a reasonably acidic young red for salad that showed some berries in the nose with the cheese.

The main course on the wine-pairing menu was mint-and-garlic-rubbed lamb chops ($19 à la carte), very lean and meaty ones that would show off any red wine to advantage. But their mate, the 2000 Silverado merlot, is a tremendous Napa red already full of fruit while still young and tannic, another wine to store for racks of lamb years down the road. The dessert was a "traditional crème caramel" with some chopped pineapple relish, all to show off a 1999 Tokay 5 Puttonyos. This legendary sweet wine from Hungary, in this vintage, had all the rich, caramel sweetness of Sauternes, but without the pineapple acidity of the better Sauternes. Taken as a whole, this wine-pairing menu was not as unusual as the one we tasted at Meritage, but it was $30 cheaper and more consistently satisfying.

As at Meritage, you can assign one or two diners to the set menu, and hunt and peck with the rest. This gets you the fried clams, say, with a wine-friendly entrée like seared sea scallops ($17) with excellent jasmine rice, five perfect asparagus, and some nice fried apples — ideal to accompany a good chardonnay. (Pan-seared Chilean sea bass might be good with the same wine, but this column is not reviewing Chilean sea bass until the fishery is controlled to preserve endangered stocks of that slow-growing fish.) For red-wine lovers, the wood-grilled pork loin with zinfandel glaze ($16) already hints at the right wine, and it comes with gingery lentils and horseradish mashed potatoes.

The veal piccata ($19) had quality veal, not too chewy, over chopped eggplant that was a little underdone and chewier than I like eggplant, but so highly flavored with black olives and capers that it would need a really sharp European wine for pairing. Order beer with this one.

By the giant wine glass, I was most taken with an old red friend, Chapoutier Côtes du Rhône ($7), showing a touch of anise in the nose. The Kenwood "Jack London" Merlot ($13) was as sophisticated as a young Bordeaux, but was outshone by the Silverado. My white, another old friend, was the Sakonnet vidal blanc ($6), usually a fruity New England wine, but somewhat closed up our night. Perhaps our most extraordinary drink was a dessert shot of Bocchino grappa di Barbaresco ($8), as smooth as old cognac despite being distilled from the grape equivalent of seeds and stems.

Desserts are not extraordinary, but they’re all good. A pumpkin cake with mascarpone icing ($7) resembles triangles of gingerbread, with a thick icing like that on carrot cake. A "chocolate hazelnut napoleon" ($7) is actually three discs of hard chocolate, with two layers of hazelnut-banana cream. This is yummy, but not as rich as a real pastry napoleon. Where is that retro trend when we really need it? Seasonal fruit with sorbet ($7) is an odd choice for a New England menu in winter. But Vinalia gets its fruit by airmail from someplace where blackberries, blueberries, and even strawberries are in season, along with some good melon slices, and puts them around a lemon sorbet.

Service at Vinalia was excellent, and this smoothes over the physical features of the room, which is not really conducive to fine dining. Aside from the usual issues — too dark to read the menus, too noisy to taste wine — the room was also rather cold in temperature during our December visit. On the plus side, the leather seats, mostly armchairs, provide enough cushioning for a lengthy dinner. The main remnant of Dakota’s is the pink granite at the entrance. Inside it’s mostly glass and light colors, a wine cooler, and a couple of apparently used armoires that somehow send the message, "We are furniture with a French name, so we love food and wine."

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com .