My vision of Democratic National Convention chaos is that the delegates will come out of the FleetCenter hungry, disregard the Phoenix’s good advice to go to Chinatown, and instead fill the sports bars that are practically the only eating joints in the area. So there they are, surrounded by images of the Red Sox, NASCAR, LPGA golf, beach volleyball, and rude commentary on ESPN23, chowing down on greasy jambalaya, sipping drinks out of fish bowls, congratulating themselves because they didn’t go to Hooters, and wondering why the Republicans think Massachusetts is so liberal and intellectual when it’s actually one endless frat party. How did John Kerry ever get elected here? How did a suit-wearing Republican like Mitt Romney get elected here? Why doesn’t the state’s entire congressional delegation consist of retired football players and talk-show hosts?

But the city will probably look different for the convention. The guy who drums on plastic barrels will be on a rehab assignment to Pawtucket. The mayor will round up all the homeless people for a week on Cape Cod; the sports bars will all be running CNN and MSNBC; all the autographed pictures of Ted Williams will be covered with old CURLEY FOR MAYOR posters; the menus will be changed over to crackers and Brie; and all the taps will foam with Chablis and Heineken.

Nah. But I must point out that even the Ruby Room, which is the lobby bar at the boutique Onyx Hotel, superimposed on Portland Street like a lace doily on a hip-hop sweatshirt, has a television airing sports over the bar. It is otherwise a lounge with lots of good snack food and a few useful entrées, executed with remarkable competence. If you can imagine Noir with more food and no scene, that’s the Ruby Room.

On the snack side, you can start with something like "House-Cut Kennenbeck [sic] Potato Chips, Melted Maytag Blue Cheese" ($6). It’s rather like a culinary Kerry-Edwards ticket, being a kind of upscale nacho made of thick potato chips with a dribbling of very fine blue cheese. Anyone who wants to win Maine, however, will have to learn to spell Kennebec, a mealy potato that makes excellent chips and fries.

No such problem with the clever fritto misto ($9), a combination of tiny, sweet Maine rock shrimp, calamari, a couple of clams, fried onions, and — yes — fried slices of lemon with a garlicky green dipping mayonnaise. In fact, for bar food, there are quite a few classic sauces here. Someone paid very good attention in the sauce class at chef school.

There is an actual lemony hollandaise as a dip for asparagus spring rolls ($8). This is a really effective bit of fusion, as the asparagus are still green and crisp inside the fried skins, which add a different kind of crunch, and just enough oil, if you don’t want the classic richness of the hollandaise. You also get a first-class presentation, as the spring rolls can be cut to stand up in different lengths. And there’s a nifty salad of micro greens and green soybeans.

Another sauce is the basil mayonnaise on the crab cakes ($11). These are three small but very meaty crab cakes on some wilted greens, as good as any in town. Another winner is the "tuna and avocado tartare" ($9.50), here presented as two turrets of coarsely chopped tuna, topped with avocado, served with a mango salsa and some delectable fried wonton skins to make your own canapés. The tuna also has some sea salt, I think, and the wontons are salted and have a little "five spice" powder as well, but salt on bar food is to be expected. Bar food this good is not usually expected.

The caesar salad ($7.50) has beautiful long spears of romaine, but average croutons, dull cheese, and an over-salted dressing. And the "Big Fat Cheeseburger" ($9.50), while certainly big and fat, came to our table more well-done than medium-rare. The "skinny fries" are thin, like those at McDonald’s, and crisp, but won’t make you skinny.

On the larger entrées, like the grilled salmon ($17), we get another real sauce (this time a mildly saffron-flavored mayonnaise), an impeccably grilled little fillet of salmon, roast potatoes, and a mélange of green beans and purple pickled onions. Beer-battered cod ($13) is somehow worked into fingers and rings; with the fluffy batter, it just melts in your mouth, and you get lots more of the skinny fries. Likewise on the grilled flatiron steak ($17), which also has some nice sautéed spinach.

The wine list for the Ruby Room is unusual, but not always successful. A glass of Westport Rivers rosé of pinot noir ($6/glass; $28/bottle) was crisp and dry, but had a slight aroma of mildew. That could be a bottle problem, but more likely it was a winery error, which suggests that no one tasted this wine before putting it on the list. The super-Tuscan (here made by adding cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes to the classic Tuscan sangiovese) Villa Pillo "Borgoforte" ($8/$37) was more successful. The bar also has Sam Adams and Harpoon IPA on tap, and "specialty cocktails"; the citrine ($8) is a delicious combination of citrus vodka and limoncello, in a martini glass. The menu says that according to "legend and lore," the drink "was believed to offer protection against evil." It will certainly protect you against the evil of excessive sobriety. More impressively, the little bar manages a fine cappuccino ($4), a decent decaf coffee ($2.95), and leaf teas brewed in metal pots ($4).

It also manages desserts: the mini-chocolate cake ($7) is actually a very credible molten cupcake, with strong chocolate flavor and vanilla ice cream. A trio of sorbets ($6) included an interesting brown-banana ice, a nice sharp lime, and a solid raspberry. The crème brûlée ($7) has plenty of burnt sugar, but the custard is thin. Perhaps most remarkable from a small kitchen and a casual menu is the cheese plate ($9): grilled bread, fresh grapes and apple slices, a fresh goat cheese, and a double cream.

Service at the Ruby Room was excellent on a slow night. If the kitchen can produce in a rush, the small room should work as well when jammed. The background music starts with Norah Jones, and probably should stay there. The décor is built around a chandelier of many red lamps, with two acoustic ceilings of various shapes, and lots of lowish seating.

My recent review of Café Apollonia (see "Dining Out," 8 Days a Week, May 28) prompted a lot of e-mail, most of it pointing out that Anthony Athanas is not part but entirely Albanian, some claiming that there are other Albanian restaurants in Boston and Braintree (but not naming them), and some inquiring about the Albanian cookbook in English I mentioned. That one is The Best of Albanian Cooking, by Klementina and R. John Hysa, in the Hippocrene series. There’s also Albanian Cookbook, published by the Woman’s Guild of St. Mary’s, in Worcester; order online at www.albaniancookbook.org. And, of course, I have some Albanian-American recipes in my American Ethnic Cookbook for Students, available at www.ethnicook.com.

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