Rarely does a restaurant benefit as much from location inside a nonprofit organization as Bravo does. Its space within the Museum of Fine Arts is large, so tables can be well spaced. It doesn’t have to be loud and popular, so it is carpeted and quiet. It’s inexpensive (with free parking after 5 pm and an additional 15 percent off for museum members), and it would even be romantic if it were darker. Bright lights from huge lamps diminish the intimacy, but make it almost possible for museum patrons to read the menu. The well-spaced tables, however, may contribute to the erratic service that dogged both our winter and summer visits. Food quality was also inconsistent, but some was always very good, and the short menu means that dishes are given their due. A particularly nice idea is not tying a lot of dishes to the current exhibit (although the restaurant was named after an artist on exhibit when it opened, Claudio Bravo). Currently, Ansel Adams is represented by a single apple-flavored drink, not a parade of black-and-white appetizers.

Instead, Bravo does rather nice, visually attractive bistro food, somewhat inexpensively. There’s a wine list of expensive bottles and very good selections by the glass. And if you have only appetizers or desserts, no one seems to mind.

Food starts well with a basket of boat-shaped sesame wafers so large that one wishes for a dip. It’s hard to get past the meze salad platter for two ($19). When we tried it last December, it was grilled zucchini and eggplant, feta cheese, a salad of baby carrots, ultra-thin French haricot beans, good winter tomatoes, and three colors of beets decorated with balsamic syrup. We were ravished. We also had an appetizer of seared tuna with Moroccan spices ($16) with a balsamic salad of onion, tomato, potato, and lots of cilantro, a brilliant spin on the too-common seared tuna. It’s still on the menu. The smoked-chicken salad ($13) hasn’t survived, but maybe it will be back next winter; served in a terrine with hazelnuts, blue cheese, two kinds of beets, and lots of arugula, it was another delight.

Currently, the lobster stew ($10) is made with scallop meat in a lobster stock, a sensible response to market conditions. It’s a nice bowl of rich chowder. Mine was slightly upstaged by apple-wood-smoked bacon, but the chef smuggled in carrots and celery along with the usual potatoes and plenty of scallops, as well as a split cracker. A little cream doesn’t obscure the genuine seafood stock in every spoonful. On the other hand, an allegedly wild-mushroom-soup special ($7) had almost no mushroom flavor, and tasted like an oversalted minestrone with weirdly sweet croutons melted in.

Grilled wild salmon ($23) is again a rare spin on a too-common platter. The salmon is apparently seared first, then baked with a coating of crumbs and perhaps a hint of mustard. Unlike fatty farmed salmon, the wild fish is possible to overcook, but Bravo prepared it just right, to the point right before it all flakes. Everything else just fell into line: a wisp of crème fraîche with chives for a sauce, two plump asparagus, a sautéed artichoke, and fried carrot curls on top for a bit of crisp.

A spiced Kurabota pork chop ($24) was less successful. The thick chop was meaty and nicely done, yet so lean as to be a little dry. A tiny dish of excellent barbecue sauce solved that problem. (The chop’s salt-and-pepper crust got cut away with the fat.) But it was hard to get the point of grilled cornbread that hadn’t had much flavor even when it was just baked; blah snap beans in various colors; or even some excellent roasted yellow and red peppers that ought to be on the meze, but had nothing to say to the pork chop.

The list of wines and drinks, however, is a strong feature. When it comes to wines by the glass, I’ve become very interested in when the bottle was opened. When you are presented with the bottle — this year’s service fad — or even given a taste, pay attention to your first sip, as some wines are tired and a few even turn overnight. I’m not sure this was the problem with my 2004 Araucano sauvignon blanc ($7.75). When I had it in December (probably the 2003 vintage), it had the sharpness and new-mown-hay nose of France’s Pouilly Fumé or Sancerre wines, with some of the tropical fruit of the New Zealand sauvignon blancs. Either the 2004 is not as sharp, or I got the last of the bottle from the night before. No issue with the Kenwood merlot ($8.75). A passion-fruit mojito ($8.50) had the inverse problem of most invented cocktails. In my observation, any twist on a dry or sour cocktail, like a margarita, martini, or daiquiri, will be much sweeter than the original. But the original mojito is a sweet rum julep from sugar-rich Cuba, so Bravo’s bartender left out the sugar, emphasizing the sour-orange quality of yellow passion fruit. We had to steal some of the coffee sugar to drink it.

Desserts are a strong point at Bravo, and even when they aren’t fabulous, they’re very pretty. The current cheese plate ($12) is a big slice of Brebis sheep cheese from the Pyrenees. It’s served striped with a caramelized and perhaps balsamic reduction, with little roasted almonds and a wine-poached pear that hadn’t been ripe enough to begin with. Flourless chocolate cake ($9.50) is more like flourless chocolate fudge, but chocoholics won’t quibble, and who else orders such a thing? A lavender-basil crème brûlée ($8) is terrific custard — really the best way to use these strongly aromatic herbs in a dessert — but with overly burnt sugar crust on top.

Despite the uneven food and service (more on that in a minute), Bravo is a restaurant to return to. The subsidized parking takes $15 to $20 off your bill right away. And because your visit to the museum is so thought-provoking, you want a place to talk. Here it is.

Now to the service issues. Crowds are unpredictable and can overwhelm even an established restaurant. My theory is that Bravo runs a bit understaffed. The kitchen bears responsibility for some pauses, which is one argument for the all-appetizer strategy. We also experienced a 20-minute delay before our drinks arrived, which is due either to an overwhelmed bar or a disorganized waiter. A fraction of the room is often screened off for events; this makes odd demands on the kitchen, and the paying customers wait.

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