Wish occupies the space that used to be Centro. Like Centro, which was tucked inside the Good Life bar, Wish is a fancy dining room enclosed by a bar of broader appeal, called Tavern on the Square. What has changed are the menu and appearance. Centro was a dark room in earth tones; Wish is fairly bright, but in cool blues and greens. Centro had an Italian menu with some real pretenses; Wish has an Italian menu that hedges with meat and potatoes. Centro, especially under its opening chef, Rene Michelena, was undersold and brilliant; Wish is pedestrian but quietly satisfying.

Each meal begins with hot white bread, crusty on the outside. There’s only one dip, but it’s good olive oil with lots of garlic and fresh basil — basically a nutless pesto. Our best appetizer turned out to be a pizza Margarita ($10), thin-crusted, crisp, and slightly charred from the wood oven, with a nice tomato sauce and melted cheese. The pizza Margarita was supposedly invented in honor of the queen of Italy and features the three colors of the flag, the green being pesto. A little pesto here doesn’t do enough in terms of either looks or taste to evoke the flag of Italy, but the pizza is very good overall.

Another fine appetizer choice is the antipasto ($14/two people) featuring cheeses (fresh mozzarella was one), meats, grilled vegetables (carrots were one), and pickled artichokes.

A dip of asiago cheese with grilled bread ($10) tasted more like spinach dip than the sharp cheese but was also good eating. So — as far as that goes — was the "classic Caesar salad" ($8), which is classic only in that it lacks anchovies. Otherwise it is a pre-dressed salad of chopped romaine (the original had full leaves) with croutons and shaved hard cheese.

A salad of grilled pear, walnuts, blue cheese, some endive, and mostly corn ($11) has good ingredients but almost no dressing to hold it together. "Crispy calamari" ($9) were underdone and thus not even crisp (the correct adjective), but they did have a decent marinara sauce as dip and a few fried rings of hot pepper to keep diners alert.

Entrées were all good, although a few were better than good. One of those was pan-roasted cod ($17), which was sweet scrod with a rich risotto incorporating some sweet corn, a garnish of andouille sausage cubed and cooked crisp as bacon, and some buttery spinach. Another fine platter was apple-glazed salmon ($19), presented in the current fashion as two slices lapped onto each other, but with a nifty garnish of fried leek "strings" and seafood risotto with flavor that just wouldn’t quit.

I also liked a dish of piccata Angeline ($15), slices of chicken with a nice lemon-caper bite, over angel-hair pasta. Angel hair is so fine it’s hard for restaurants to make without turning it to mush, but it does hold a lot of sauce per inch. On the other hand, the rigatoni Bolognese ($14) was meaty but undistinguished. Freeform vegetable lasagna ($15) was a large mound of pasta and vegetables, the flavor dominated by artichokes, with some watery tomato sauce.

A grilled sirloin ($21) will satisfy carnivores. It’s on the tasty and tougher ends of the sirloin spectrum, with a portobello-flavored reduction sauce and excellent smashed potatoes. A stuffed pork chop ($19) was sent to the table on edge, braced by scallion mashed potatoes. You don’t often see a vertical pork chop, but the stuffing (blue cheese, figs, walnuts, and vegetables) was too busy, with active flavors canceling each other out. Lemon sole ($17) was good fish but over-salted.

Wish’s wine list isn’t long and doesn’t give vintage years. As the generally superior 2003s come on the market, savvy customers will seek out cheap wines from the fat year. In the meantime, we had three Italian reds from the same main grape for our large party. The Tiziano Chianti ($6.50/glass; $24/bottle) had the classic aromas of sangiovese but a light, thin flavor. The Castello di Volpaia Chianti Classico ($34) turned out to be the 2002, rich and long in flavor, with enough dark fruit to match the body. Umberto Cesari’s sangiovese di Romagna ($28) is non-vintage, from outside the Chianti region, but very much in the same style, with a weight between that of the other two. Designated drivers can enjoy sparkling San Pellegrino at a very decent $4. Coffee ($1.75), espresso ($2.50; $4.75/double), tea ($1.75), and the various decaf versions were all well made.

Wish has only three desserts, and that’s a good decision, as all three are above average. Even the familiar tiramisu ($7) is a large square, nicely defined with clear flavors of coffee liqueur and cocoa. The warm chocolate cake ($7) is an excellent patty of underbaked super-chocolate, compromised only by two scoops of mediocre vanilla ice cream piled on a strudel-dough purse. Sizzling apple pie ($8) is served on a sizzling platter. This tends to burn the crust, which probably wasn’t great to begin with, but it also wonderfully concentrates the caramel sauce served in a gravy boat on the side.

Service at Wish was good if unhurried, with no rush to free large tables for others. The atmosphere doesn’t have the delicious we’ve-got-a-secret feeling of the early days of Centro, but it’s a little more relaxed in consequence. With the food consistently good, and minus the distractions of greatness, this is a fine restaurant for conversation, second dates, big groups (although the 18 percent automatic gratuity makes that pricey), and meeting friends.

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