This space had a good run as bistro On the Park. It was then redone and downscaled to a pizza bar, even with a plasma-screen TV for only 14 tables and a few bar seats. But after almost a year, the menu has worked its way back to bistro, with salads, pastas, and grilled meats and vegetable garnishes. A neighborhood crowd is delighted with the changes, but because of the out-of-the-way location on back streets between Tremont and Washington, there’s room for a few Phoenix readers to sneak in for a fine (sometimes very fine) bit of dinner at moderate expense.

This said, the tone and décor are more like "bar" than "bistro." There’s even a flat-screen TV tuned to sports. The mascot and symbol at Joe V’s is a sock monkey, sometimes on a skateboard. (The sock monkey probably wrote the menu, which jokingly lists appetizers under "Let’s Start" and entrées under "Moving On.") The tables are bare-white Formica; the walls are painted absinthe yellow, relieved by quasi-impressionist paintings, and with wood floors and loud background music, it’s a noisy little place.

But once you get past the spongy Italian bread in the basket (and foil-wrapped butters), it’s smooth eating. For example, pork dumplings ($9) are the Chinese kind, not usually served in a post-pizza bistro, but these are superb, with a lean, gingery filling, very well-handled pasta, and a spicy, garlicky soy dip. Marco Polo must have thought he had died and gone to heaven when he got to Beijing. Adding to the usual six dumplings is a nice salad of field greens.

An arugula salad ($8) has shreds of fennel, shaved parmesan, grapefruit slices — a nice departure from the cliché — and just enough dressing. The Caesar ($7) is just that, not overdressed or over-cheesed, but good old Romaine lettuce, a little dressing, some shaved parmesan for emphasis, four whole anchovies to stimulate table talk, and nondescript croutons. Then there’s the side order of garlic bread ($4.50), which uses the spongy white bread to blot up lots of garlicky butter.

Another appetizer angle would be one of the "ultra-thin-crust" pizzas. Based on a special order topped with shaved steak, provolone cheese, and mushrooms ($14), the crusts are about an eighth-inch thick, and might be too thin for such a gooey and thick topping. The cheese, not so sharp or smoky as most provolone, glues up the mushrooms pretty nicely, but shaved steak is rather bland stuff as a pizza topping.

Our only controversial appetizer was sautéed calamari ($12.50), which was full of jalapeño slices. This is ordinarily no problem, but sautéing involves oil, and the hot parts of hot peppers are soluble in oil, so this is quite a spicy dish; you could eat the same jalapeños in a salsa and not mind. The spongy bread is pretty good as a soaker-upper in this platter.

"Moving On," as they say, the lobster raviolis ($20) were actually underdone as they would be in Italy, obviously homemade pasta, with a tomato-cream "vodka" sauce that fortunately had all the vodka cooked out. The chopped lobster filling was good if you isolated it, but pleasantly lost in the cream sauce if you didn’t. Another pasta dish, shrimp and scallops on bowtie pasta ($18), had more seafood with more flavor, amplified with a funky sauce described on the menu as "sundried tomato pesto." The bowties were more fully cooked, but still al dente in the American sense.

The "Gym Favorite" was a nice try with a marinated slice of boned chicken (too much oregano), eight spears of unseasonal asparagus, broiled broccoli florets, and halves of cherry tomato. This is so you look like you’ve been to the gym. There is another gym dish if you’ve already been and want to reward yourself with carbs.

The only weaker entrée was spicy sausage with pasta ($12.50). We took ziti over linguini, and the pasta was good but not better than at home, and the sausage wasn’t very spicy, so the dish was good eating, but pedestrian.

The wine list was also set up by the sock monkey, so it has a handful of bottles under "cheap" ($5 to $6.50 per glass only), a few "decent," and a few more "wicked good" ($40 to $99 per bottle). The special was a cheap "montepulciano," which is confusing as it is both a place and a grape. At $23 a bottle, I was fairly sure this was the grape, and sure enough, it was montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the 2002 Umani Ronchi, served badly in tumblers. So served, this is red wine that tastes earthy, light, and a little hot with alcohol. A real wine glass might concentrate some fruit aromas to neutralize those impressions.

However, coffee and decaf ($2) were both well made and served, and water was refilled at bistro intervals, not bar intervals.

Desserts were three kinds of bought cake (all $5.50). I liked the carrot cake, which was the largest slice, and full of spice and raisins, with the usual cream-cheese frosting. Chocolate-mousse cake is mousse only in the filling, regular chocolate cake in the layers, but a sauce that tastes like Hershey syrup, so you get your chocolate. "Chocolate cheesecake," au contraire, is just chocolate-coated cheesecake, but rather good cheesecake.

Service at Joe V’s is good, as the small room makes it impossible for servers to avoid eye contact. The atmosphere is jumping, which is a little much for leisurely bistro dinners, but suits a youngish crowd. There is some shtick about giving away dog bones from a receptacle out front. I think sock monkeys might be more fun for the dogs, but I’m not up on canines. If you like Joe V’s, it’s a second-date place: still too loud for deep conversational probing, but a good tester for sociability.

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