Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, West on Centre is not the first West Roxbury restaurant to enter the "fine dining" category. But it is the largest, and it doesn’t do just fine food; the menu also includes some experimental and retro cuisine. West on Centre is solid on the former but sometimes falters when it looks back or goes where no chef has gone before.

Appetizers are relatively familiar. "Crispy calamari" ($8) will prompt the language police to note that the adjective is "crisp." The squid rings are served quite crisp, although a few were mostly breading and entirely crisp, without much tender squid inside. The dip is a creamy one, with sneaky heat. A special on "warm spinach salad" ($7) wasn’t warm, but it was delicious, with baby-spinach leaves offset by French-fried onions, walnuts, and a little goat cheese. Butternut-squash soup ($5) is excellent, with lots of squash flavor, and a little center garnish of scallions in fairly sour cream (or full-fat yogurt). Green beans and feta ($6) make for a real elevation of bean salad, since the beans are fresh and flavorful, the marinade has lots of red onions, and the feta is broken into the dressing to add to every bite. I also like the little mushroom toasts with the beans.

The winner on our table was probably another special, sea scallops with bacon ($10), both well flavored and perfectly grilled on skewers, with a parsnip purée. Light eaters or late snackers could make a meal of this.

Our weakest appetizer, oddly enough, was neither contemporary nor experimental, but retro: "baked mac ’n’ cheese" ($7). It’s the creamy kind rather than the cheesy kind, although nicely baked with browned crumbs on top, and a few peas and carrots scattered in. It’s also too large a portion for an appetizer — perhaps it is intended for teenagers or the post–Sunday Mass brunch crowd from the nearby Holy Name, who want something more filling right away.

No such problems with the entrées. The knock-out was braised veal breast ($15), an unjustly neglected cut of an unjustly neglected meat. Veal breast used to be done as a stuffed roast, and there was a lot of fat to get through. But West’s chef fillets out the meaty parts (and, I hope, saves the bones for stock) and stews it up with gnocchi, diced pumpkin, and bits of Italian-style bacon in a tomato sauce that brings out a lot of veal flavor. I almost regret writing this, because I’ve been doing similar things with cheap veal breasts for years, and restaurant dishes like this are likely to drive the prices up as they did with my old favorites such as lamb shanks and monkfish.

Speaking of lamb shanks ($17) and monkfish ($17), West bakes the latter on a bed of chickpeas with too-mild Moroccan spices, and a nut-tomato relish that is also milder than real Moroccan harissa, but very good with the fish. The only error here is the invention of cauliflower "couscous," an obvious variation on the horrid cauliflower "mashed potatoes" of the South Beach diet. Make them optional for dieters, offer a real couscous, be a little bolder with chickpeas, and this is another terrific entrée, as the fish is excellent and well made. The lamb shank I wasn’t crazy about; it may have been a little overdone and dried out, although the sauce of sun-dried tomato and mashed parsnips was quite complementary.

The sirloin club steak ($20) is the retro choice, served rare as ordered with excellent mashed potatoes and oven-roasted asparagus. I can tell you it was seldom this good in the 1950s, unless in those days they marinated the meat as I suspect they do at West. Pan-seared haddock ($16) isn’t really seared. I think we are dealing with a European or specifically Irish term here, similar to the recurrent "seared mussels" on recent menus. It’s a fine piece of fish with littleneck clams in the shell, little waxy potatoes, and somewhat-over-salted chard. Grilled swordfish ($17) does a good job with the fish, which is accompanied by a very creative and effective garnish of pomegranate seeds and chunks of red and yellow beets.

West serves drinks, including a minty, strong mojito ($7). The wine list is serious, and we were delighted with the non-vintage Rosenblum Vintners Cuvée XXV Zinfandel ($26). It had the spicy bouquet and bramble-fruit nose I’ve been missing in California zins. For white-wine drinkers, the 2002 Cave de Turckheim Tokay Pinot Gris ($26) was a drier, more aromatic, Alsatian answer to pinot grigio. West also managed a very decent decaf coffee ($2).

If there’s a weak course here, it’s dessert, which feels like it’s stuck at a price point too low for really elegant desserts and too high for merely hearty ones. So we end up with something like apple cheesecake ($7), where the cheesecake is a cylindrical shell for a filling of apple-pie stuff, but neither aspect, nor the combination, is really impressive. A special butterscotch pudding ($6) was presented in a sugar-pumpkin shell, with pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) and little star-shaped cookies as a garnish. All that was swell, but the whole fun and surprise of butterscotch pudding falls apart when the pudding doesn’t have a strong flavor. This would have been better with pumpkin-pie filling right out of the can. Nothing wrong with banana bread pudding ($7), not even topping it with caramelized bananas and banana ice cream. And a pear-and-cranberry galette ($7) is a kind of mini freeform tart that would be better only with a truly great crust, although the accompanying pear sorbet was thin and tasteless. Coconut-almond-brownie sundae ($6) is actually rather good, with enough chocolate to carry the day and the other stuff played mostly for crunch. My favorite dessert, though, was a special on a mini baked Alaska ($6). What’s the difference between baked Alaska and fried ice cream? Baked Alaska has a meringue shell instead of fried breading, so it tastes better. The regular baked Alaska ($16) serves four and uses chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The mini version has rum raisin, which worked really well with the meringue shell.

Service on a crowded Friday night was excellent. The rooms are noisy. The main dining room has an open kitchen and an eating bar so individual diners can face the kitchen (and the noise). The bar side has a flat-screen TV and a good fake fire. Both rooms have a lot of windows, tabletops of mock-slate laminate, cherry-wood chairs, and hardly anything to absorb sound. The noise brings a young crowd, or vice versa, who are not overdressed. West Roxbury looks like a suburb in the city, but it’s always been a rather middle-class suburb, and that’s probably why it has few — but not no — restaurants. Within a couple of blocks are another bistro, an Irish pub with above-average food, an excellent Irish-owned diner, and Thai take-out, so it’s not like the area never had a restaurant before. Now it has a big one, and if you wander in, you’ll eat well.

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