The storyline of Rustic Kitchen is like a soap opera’s. It was once Todd English’s Rustic Kitchen in Quincy Market, a kind of greatest-hits reprise for that famous chef. But he handed it over to a partner to settle a lawsuit, and the partner brought in a promising smaller-venue chef, Bill Bradley (ex-Bricco, ex-Carmen). Bradley stabilized the odd location, and now there are two more Rustic Kitchens. This one, in Porter Square, moves into a large (230 seats) space that has killed some pretty good restaurants: Cottonwood Café (after a decent run), Metro, and Giuseppe’s. By one estimate, the sophisticated neighborhood is ready for the experimental, Italian side of Bradley’s thinking. By the other, there had better be enough familiar pizza and pasta to keep hundred of fannies in the seats nightly. There’s also a question of scaling up — although it probably has a better kitchen than the Quincy Market restaurant (which still feels as though it’s camped out on the flagstones), this has to be boutique cuisine for the masses. Bradley’s man on the scene is Mark Usewicz, ex-Casablanca and ex–Chez Henri, and most recently of the Independent.

Based on one dinner visit and one lunch visit, there’s a lot to like here, and also some unevenness. The dinner menu has the newer ideas; the lunch menu focuses on standbys and has cut some prices.

The breadbasket has slices of an excellent crusty loaf but also leaden focaccias with olives or cheese. A white-bean dip has little garlic, but excellent olive oil on top. My favorite appetizers were dinnertime cicchetti, Venetian tapas pioneered locally at La Morra. The knockout is one of roasted beet cubes ($6) with a little ricotta salata cheese and fennel pollen. This was my first sighting in Boston of fennel pollen — large pollen grains about as big as salt grains, with an ethereal citrus-anise flavor and aroma. A dusting truly distinguishes the cubes of various beets.

I also enjoyed fried rice balls ($5), called arancini in the North End — three golf balls with cheese centers, in a light tomato sauce with some chickpeas. From the evening list of raw and pickled fish, we tried "Sardinian tuna" with cucumber salad ($10). The sushi-like slices of tuna were good but marinated to taste like pickled herring. It seems odd to take perfectly good $20-a-pound tuna and turn it into something like a jar of herring, but maybe that’s what they do in Sardinia.

More-conventional appetizers include clam chowder ($9/lunch), a gray, Rhode Island–style chowder with plenty of potatoes, upscaled with Wellfleet littleneck clams in the shells. The only weakness is broth that doesn’t taste enough like clams. A salad of mixed field greens ($6/lunch) is nicely dressed, and adds croutons to the usual treatment. Caesar salad ($7) is conventionally pre-dressed, with croutons and cheese to justify the name.

The visible wood-fired oven suggests splitting a pizza as an appetizer, and I’d recommend the portobello ($10/lunch), with a thin, crisp crust and a good balance of mushroom flavors with goat cheese for flavor and fontina for stringy melting. The lamb-sausage pizza ($10) had too much (and too salty) topping, so the crust didn’t crisp up; these should be easy adjustments, so keep an eye on this one, too.

Agnolotti del plin ($17) was my favorite Bradley dish at the Quincy Market restaurant, and may be even better here. Agnolotti are pasta in the shape of priests’ hats, pinched for more chew, here stuffed with veal and swimming in a meaty veal gravy. Grilled venison ($22) is a series of rare slices arranged like a charlotte on a mound of broccoli rabe with apples and grapes, in a sauce that’s supposed to be a fruit mustard but comes off as a very salty glaze. The meat is impeccable but the sauce needs some work.

Baked rigatoni ($14) comes out of that oven, but gains little taste of the fire. What you get is perfect comfort food: cheese-baked pasta with just enough tomato in the sauce to keep it from being macaroni and cheese (which is elsewhere on the menu).

At lunch, I was most impressed with a crabmeat salad ($14), a beautiful cylinder of crabmeat atop chopped tomatoes, with most of an avocado on the side and a tarragon mayonnaise holding everything together. I also like the roasted vegetable panini ($10), as much for the homemade potato chips as the Foreman-grilled (perfectly authentic) sandwich itself. The four-cheese panini ($10), on nut bread, was too busy for me.

The wine list has become more Italian, and now has an unusual organization by flavor groups. For example, red wines are "Fruit-Driven Reds," "Rough Riders," "Easy Riders," "Rustic Reds," or "Too Big to Put Anywhere Else." Of them, a glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ($7) had some structure to stand up to tomato sauce, while a syrah ($9.50) got a little overwhelmed by the food despite lots of fruit. On the white side, the current 2003 Tenuta di Pietra frascati ($7.50/glass; $27/bottle) is lot better wine than the pinot grigio people order in restaurants, with a similar balance of fruity aroma and dry finish. Coffee and decaf ($1.75) are excellent, and tea ($1.75) is served in a china pot with the tea bag or bag of loose tea on the side.

Desserts, credited to pastry chef Heather McDonald, are excellent, but the cheese platter ($12) is one of the best around: four Italian cheeses including an aged sheep’s cheese, a hard goat cheese, a novel and delicious blue, and a semisoft cow’s cheese. There’s a bit of fresh fruit and crackers, but the cheeses are all superb and showing well, purchased from Formaggio.

When you do get to dessert, don’t miss the sorbetti ($5), including a green apple with a distinct flavor of Granny Smith, a blood orange again true to the fruit, and a cranberry ice that isn’t too tart at all. Cinnamon crème brûlée ($8) is cream, not custard, but subtly flavored and garnished with a fig covered in layers of chocolate and nuts, and a fig cookie. The gelati ($6) are chocolate, vanilla, and hazelnut. Or you can get the milk-chocolate hazelnut sundae ($8) with three different scoops, in a pastry like the shell of a chocolate éclair, with chocolate cookies and sauce. I don’t like the shell, but favor the garnishes.

The obligatory warm chocolate cake ($8) is nicely bitter, with a chocolate-nut wafer as garnish. A pear charlotte ($8) is teeny, but choice, with fruit garnishes that mostly vanished into our cheese platter.

Service, on both a quiet afternoon and a getting-busy weeknight, was excellent. The rooms are redecorated and improved, especially with foodish décor such as racks of homemade pasta (replaced weekly, I am assured), baskets of bread, and bottles of wine in the window. The last makes for pretty colors, but isn’t so good for wine storage, so let’s hope they also are rotated weekly. They’ve kept the tin ceilings, redone the lighting, and set up a bar facing the wood oven and another facing away. The bistro-like barroom is where everyone wants to sit, so the quieter back room is overflow. One of the better features is the validated parking in the lot behind what was once a Sears store. However, you must step lively, as the exit pass works for only three minutes, and then Lesley College charges you another dollar to get out.

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