But instead of the day's specials, Robert Browning's "Pippa's Song" is chalked on a blackboard in the front room: " … God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." Books of poetry by Charles Bukowski are stacked in the bathroom; Czeslaw Milosz and Jorie Graham volumes sit above the bar.

The chef, Pippa Calland, is American and named after Browning's poem. After she abandoned graduate school, where she was studying English literature, she worked as a chef for 10 years in Buffalo and Manhattan, then went to Italy to continue her cooking education. Upon her return, she made her reputation as a chef first at Pino Luongo's Coco Pazzo in Philadelphia and then at Le Madri in Chelsea.

Her food takes its inspiration from the rustic cuisine of trattorias in the North of Italy. Just taste the polenta and dream you're in Tuscany; it's enriched with mascarpone and topped with a wonderful, gooey mess of roasted mushrooms and Taleggio cheese sprinkled with white truffle oil. Chicken livers, sautéed whole with pancetta, balsamic vinegar and fried sage, are plump and pink, a decadent pile heaped in a large white bowl. They're the best chicken livers in the neighborhood-except for the chopped liver at the Second Avenue Deli, of course.

The kitchen, housed in the restaurant's cramped basement, makes use of the best and freshest of ingredients. The buffalo mozzarella is irreproachable, the farmers'-market greens superb. So is the prosciutto made from Berkshire pigs, served with a spicy fig mustard and young pecorino toscano.

"Cheers!" said our waiter as he filled our glasses with wine. In this setting, you'd expect to be given thick tumblers. Instead, the wine is poured into large, thin-rimmed goblets that must surely drive up the kitchen's overhead a digit or two. (Just getting them up and down those narrow basement stairs in one piece is a feat in itself.) The wine list, almost entirely Italian, is excellent, with many unusual choices, including bottles that are hard to obtain in the liquor store. A dolcetto from Sandrone was a find at $34.

Poets with delicate digestions can begin dinner with a salad of poached shrimp, blood oranges and avocado served on bibb lettuce. There's something 50's about the look of this simple dish, which comes with a mayonnaise lightly spiced with Vietnamese chilies. Each ingredient speaks for itself. Arugula salad is taken to another level, tossed with pomegranate molasses and seeds, candied walnuts and shavings of goat's-milk cheese. Fried calamari are also a cut above the norm, pearly tendrils coated with an almost invisible batter and served in a white paper cone with fried parsley, a creamy lemon aioli and a fresh tomato sauce.

There are over half a dozen pastas on the menu, ranging from spaghetti and meatballs for $10 to bucatini with lobster for $18. Orchiette with Manila clams, pancetta and broccoli rabe is cooked just right, but the dish is a tad salty and oily to boot. As for the spaghetti carbonara, perhaps it should be called something else for those of us expecting a sauce made with cream. The chef's version consists of roasted red onions, olive oil and Guanciale bacon in an egg suspension with pecorino romano cheese. No cream. It's good, but a bit of a letdown.

"Today, our special is a rib-eye roasted in the oven with garlic and rosemary," said our waiter. "It's $34. I wanted you to know that, because the last table was very upset at the price."

No wonder the people were cross: The steak was huge, chewy and dull. The price of a thick-cut grilled veal chop-a dish you find frequently on menus in Tuscany-would certainly upset Poetessa's customers. So Ms. Calland uses a center-cut pork chop instead. It's brined in cider to keep it moist and grilled medium rare, served with roast potatoes flecked with rosemary. This is a humungous piece of meat, full of flavor and hardly overpriced at $18. But it could feed two people generously, and eating your way through the whole thing in one go is a bit of an effort.

The snapper is wonderful, served with a nice, crusty skin in a rich tomato shellfish broth with Manila clams and mussels. I also love the silky braised Colorado lamb shank with gigante beans, leaves of Tuscan kale and a gremolata made with Meyer lemons.

Desserts include a molten chocolate cake that is more lumpen than molten (I tried it twice, and it was overcooked both times), though the warm apple sour-cream cake-jazzed up with a cranberry compote and cinnamon gelato-is first-rate.

Poetessa has two dining rooms. The back one is quieter, unless you happen upon a table for 10, as I did one night-all young women drinking champagne. The restaurant is romantic, a terrific place for a date, with a great deal of funky charm. Looking around the room on a recent night, I saw so many couples holding hands or gazing into each other's eyes that I could have sworn it was Valentine's Day.

Was Just What We NeededSometimes you leave a restaurant with the memory of one dish that impressed you so much, you keep thinking about it days later. Such is the bucatini with cavolo nero served at 50 Carmine, a new Tuscan restaurant in the West Village. Cavolo nero is a black Tuscan kale. Here, it's cooked in olive oil with chilies and garlic, puréed, topped with toasted bread crumbs and tossed over long strands of the hollow pasta known as bucatini. What could be simpler or more straightforward? It's absolutely wonderful, and it embodies the taste of Tuscany.

You might think New York already has more than enough Tuscan restaurants (and the world has enough soft-focus Chiantishire films, expat memoirs about rescuing crumbling farmhouses and, of course, Tuscan cookbooks). But before you scoff, head over to 50 Carmine and taste the food that chef Sara Jenkins is cooking there. Spare ribs, braised in red wine with peppercorns and garlic, arrive falling off the bone on a mound of soft, grainy polenta: It's an old-fashioned Tuscan dish that is said to have been served to the workmen who built the Duomo in Florence. Lamb fricassee, tender pieces of meat combined with mushrooms in a sauce thickened with egg yolks and lemon juice, is another ancient Tuscan recipe unearthed by Ms. Jenkins. When they're available, she makes the dish with artichokes, but it was great with mushrooms, too. And as my Irish grandmother used to say when she encountered a dish she particularly liked: "You could give it to anyone."

Ms. Jenkins comes by way of Il Buco and later Patio Dining in the East Village, where she gained a reputation for cooking food that was earthy, vital and authentic, made with the best and freshest of ingredients thanks to her regular trips to the farmers' market. Ms. Jenkins carries on this tradition at 50 Carmine, where, for example, you can begin with a dish that doesn't sound at all exciting: a melange of Brussels sprouts, faro, turnips and beets. In fact, it reads like the sort of thing a chef might toss out as a sop to vegetarians. But the vegetables were superb: They were pan-roasted and tossed together with crunchy grains of faro, olive oil, vinegar and parsley leaves, and topped with melted shavings of pecorino. Here you have a Thanksgiving dish that beats anything you're likely to get at Thanksgiving.

Before 50 Carmine opened at the end of September, the premises were occupied for years by Cent'Anni, an affable Northern Italian neighborhood trattoria. The new proprietor is Paola Bottero (who, incidentally, is from Rome), who also owns Paola's and Trattoria Rustica on the Upper East Side. Her son, Stefano Marracino, runs the restaurant. The décor is rustic and plain; much like a typical Tuscan trattoria, it's understated and unpretentious. A long wooden bar runs almost the length of the dining room, which has a wood floor and bare brick walls. Brown paper cloths cover the tables, and there is rather harsh pinpoint lighting over some them that could easily be fixed if it were aimed just about anywhere other than directly over your head. The dining room is quite noisy but not unbearably so, and on warm evenings the doors open onto the street.

When I walk into a restaurant, there are two things I want to do right away: One is to sit down, and the other is to get a drink. But on my first visit to 50 Carmine, four of us walked in and stood by the bar-which was empty-for about 10 minutes before anyone even acknowledged our presence. (There was no sign of a bartender, either.) At last we were seated; the wine list-which has many interesting Italian boutique vintages at reasonable prices-was brought to the table, and our waiter turned out to be charming, if a trifle harrassed.

He urged us to try a special of the day: monkfish liver with balsamic glaze and bacon. But my companions balked, so we ordered other first courses instead, including a couple of salads. One was made with watercress and endive, came with a dressing made with Vin Santo vinegar, and was garnished with toasted almonds and crumbled blue cheese. The other consisted of baby arugula leaves and pomegranate seeds tossed in a dressing of shallots, mustard and tangerine juice. Both were excellent.

Our waiter returned to the table. "A gift from the kitchen," he said, holding out a plate. "The chef wants you to try this." It was the monkfish liver, seared and served rare with bacon and an onion-balsamic glaze. The role of toast points had been taken over by hearty slices of grilled whole-grain bread. It was delicious. "Monkfish liver is like foie gras, but it's healthy and doesn't ruin little ducks' lives," said Ms. Jenkins over the telephone later. Well, it's sort of healthy, if you don't count the bacon. But when it's this good, who cares?

Calamari arrives in one piece in the small cast-iron skillet it's cooked in. The heat has crisped it on the bottom and steamed it all the way through, making it tender. It's covered with a layer of bread crumbs and lemon and brought sizzling to the table. Baccala is cooked in water with potatoes, celery and garlic, and is whipped together with olive oil. It's pleasant, but I prefer the creamier texture of brandade done the French way. Ms. Jenkins turns out a duck breast (which is rare, but not too rare) that has a miraculously crisp, non-greasy skin. The trick, she said, is to put the bird in a cold pan skin-side down and render out the fat, then turn up the heat to crisp it and sear the other side.

There are 10 pastas on the menu, and they include the classic Tuscan dish of pappardelle served with a rich red wine wild-boar sauce made with tomatoes and rosemary. Macaroni is tossed with a sauce made from garlic and sautéed mustard greens and whisked with ricotta and Parmesan; it's surprisingly bland.

There is no dessert menu, but a choice of three is offered daily. The chocolate tart is unusual. It's a peppery, masculine dessert: a pastry shell filled with a thin layer of creamy chocolate ganache infused with chilies and lemon zest. It's completely without adornment, just a slab on the plate (it could do with a little dressing up), but the excitement comes with the subtle, spicy slap on the back of your throat when you taste it. A tangerine olive oil cake, based on a Tuscan recipe originally made with blood oranges, is a wonderful chewy sponge. And the fruit tart is a real old-fashioned homey pie, made with piles of quince heaped six inches high in its pastry crust.

A few days after my first visit, I returned to 50 Carmine to find a group of friends-all die-hard foodies-having dinner. "You absolutely must try the monkfish liver," they said. And over the course of the evening, each one came over to see what we were eating: 50 Carmine is that kind of restaurant.

Based on the best-seller by writer Frances Mayes, about how she chucked the stress and anxiety of a career that had hit a brick wall and started over by turning a ramshackle old Tuscan villa into a brand-new way of life, the film adaptation by writer-director Audrey Wells has vibrantly enhanced the source material with a warmth, intelligence and compassion that has won the praise of the original author and left audiences cheering. Since I didn't read the book, I don't know how much of the real story has been changed to serve the purposes of a feel-good movie, but the script presents Frances Mayes as a 35-year-old San Francisco book critic, shattered by sudden divorce, who loses her house in a community-property settlement. Despondent and depressed, disillusioned in love and tortured by a debilitating case of writer's block, she is clearly at a crossroads. Since I identify completely with every problem she's got, I leaned forward in my seat, tensed with empathy. Enter her best friend, Patti (Sandra Oh), a newly pregnant lesbian pal starting a family with her life partner, who gives Frances a 10-day trip to Northern Italy. It's a gay bus tour, but that doesn't prevent the exhausted, confused Frances from falling in love-with the purple hills, the terraced farms, the sunny residents of Tuscany, and the reassuring calm of a way of life unknown in the high-velocity world of Bay Area publishing. The dizzying rapture of the scenery seduces Frances so much that she finds herself staring into shop windows advertising real estate. Drawn as if by some uncontrollable magnet, she finds herself impulsively hocking her savings to buy a crumbling old villa she can't afford called Bramasole. With the aid of a friendly realtor (Vincent Riotta), she hires a crew of Polish construction workers, and a love affair begins to grow between a lonely, lost American woman with no future and a 300-year-old house with entirely too much past. Nursing her antique money-trap through every malady of an interminable renovation, observing the customs of the town, struggling to learn the language, helping the neighbors harvest olives, Frances makes a series of new friends, including a flamboyant British actress (Lindsay Duncan) who was discovered by Fellini, a young girl who falls in love with one of the Polish workers, and an assortment of creatures-including a snake that likes the house as much as she does. The house pays her back, with a temperamental kitchen that inspires her to become a fantastic chef of Northern Italian cuisine-a new talent that provides her with unexpected material for future manuscripts. By leaving herself open and filing away the past, Frances also revives a sexual appetite she thought was dead and buried, with a lover who may possibly be the handsomest man in Italy (hunky newcomer Raoul Bova, a living magazine cover). As the seasons change from fields of sunflowers to acres of red poppies, and Frances' landscape is punctuated by monastery bells and white doves flying from the belfry of the ancient church in the square, her new life becomes liberating and self-fulfilling and, in almost every way, a dream come true.

Maybe too much of a dream. The movie is so spectacular, and Frances' adventures are so inspiring, that I wanted to pack a bag and head for Tuscany myself. And Diane Lane is as fresh and real as she is charming. (I shudder to think what a gummy mess Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan would have made of this film's moment-to-moment honesty and lack of pretense.) But too much perfection can be disarming. Perhaps sensing the need to fill the sublime spaces with less observation and more narrative, director Wells fills her third act with too many plot points. Frances must play savior to the English actress when she drunkenly dances into the town fountain and re-creates her big scene from La Dolce Vita , as well as matchmaker between one of the Polish workers and the daughter of the neighbors, who refuse to permit a wedding, and midwife to gal pal Patti, who arrives from San Francisco to have her baby alone. Suddenly the film is filled with tangential characters who intrude on Diane Lane's rich centerpiece performance when it would have been more interesting to watch her cope with each new challenge. (It is also never too clear how a writer with no income is paying for all of this.) Still, in a movie as delicious and caloric as fettuccine carbonara, who cares if there's no salt on the table? The way Frances turns her rundown architectural albatross into a home for an extended family that forms her new future gives this film a special glow of satisfaction, and I liked her metaphor about the man who devotes years to building a train track in the middle of nowhere. No apparent reason, except he knows someday a train will come.

Everything ends almost too happily to be believed, but in Tuscany anything is possible. I even like the film's advertising slogan: "Life offers you a thousand chances … all you have to do is take one." A talisman to live by, if you ask me. File Under the Tuscan Sun under guilty pleasures, but I loved it unconditionally.

Canadian Surprise

There's a different kind of courage in My Life Without Me , a sensitive, muted study of loving and dying that surprised critics in Toronto for the way it rises above the usual torpor of Canadian films. Helmed by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, it's the kind of downer theme I've come to dread: a young wife and mother diagnosed with terminal cancer and how she spends her final days preparing for death. The acclaimed Canadian actress Sarah Polley, who made a memorable impact in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter , gives a delicately structured performance as a 23-year-old Vancouver woman who lives in a seedy trailer park with two kids and a sweet but underemployed husband with no ambition (the charismatic Scott Speedman). Her dad is in jail, her own cynical mom hates life, and she works as a janitor, cleaning office buildings. Now she's suddenly faced with the news that she has less than two months to live. Without a trace of self-pitying melodrama, she realizes what it means to get your priorities straight. On a time limit, your whole life quickly looks like a dress rehearsal and you are suddenly facing your own third act. This woman, whose life is ending before she's even old enough to realize her dreams, makes a list of things to do before her time runs out. She visits her father in jail (a strange, rabbity performance by Alfred Molina). Losing faith in her own allure, she has an affair with another man (sensitive, caring work by Mark Ruffalo) because it's something she's never done. Methodical and organized, she buys false fingernails, records cassettes of birthday wishes for every year of her two daughters' lives until they reach the age of 18, and even tries to find a new wife for her husband. Above all, she does these things without telling anyone her secret. Of course, the loose ends do not tie as neatly as planned. The affair with Mr. Ruffalo turns from an experiment to real love, and there is one more broken heart to mend.

This is familiar terrain, and the great Margaret Sullavan explored it first, in the 1950 tearjerker No Sad Songs for Me . But what saves My Life Without Me from the status of a five-Kleenex weepie is the maturity of vision that permeates the writing and direction and shines through each performance. In the wrong hands, the film could have been unbearably maudlin, but Ms. Polley works diligently to eschew clichés and keep it elevated above the level of a TV movie of the week. She's so considerate and likable you keep hoping the diagnosis will turn out to be wrong in time for a happy ending. But the filmmakers keep it honest, resisting easy solutions. As a wake-up call for people who take life for granted, the bell is loud and shattering.

Allen Goes On... and On

Anything Else is middle-rung Woody Allen, which left me not only disappointed but scratching my head, muttering, "Huh?" Jason Biggs, as a neurotic young comedy writer whose career is stalled (he turns down jobs in California if they separate him from his shrink), and Woody himself, as a neurotic old comedy writer who has spent so much time in a strait jacket he's got a permanent reservation at Payne Whitney, seem to be mirror images of each other. The aspiring young guy, who dreams that the Cleveland Indians all got jobs at Toys "R" Us, is trapped with a tortured manager (Danny DeVito), a chain-smoking, pill-popping girlfriend (Christina Ricci, lightening up for a change in a role that is less goth than usual) and her loopy mother (Stockard Channing), who attacks middle age snorting cocaine and trying out a new cabaret act. Meanwhile, the old guy teaches the young guy a survival course in self-protection against rapists, burglars and the return of the Nazi Gestapo. None of this adds up to much of a movie; it's more like a filmed hodgepodge of not-fully-thought-out ideas and one-liners and small shards of jaundiced polemic. The pieces of the collage never meld, because Woody seems less concerned with telling a story coherently and more interested in visually sharing notations from his Palm Pilot, dispensing discourses on firearms, quantum physics, Sophia Loren and masturbation. Some of it is funny, but not nearly funny enough. On the plus side, New York is, once again, a constantly changing movie set, photographed by the great Iranian cinematographer Darius Khondji, and the music is by Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson. Woody Allen movies used to be 90 minutes long, and that's what I liked about them. This one drags on for about two hours. He's getting older: His movies should be getting shorter, not the other way around.

On July 8, the doorman of an apartment building at Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street filed a complaint against his building's super. According to the victim, a 43-year-old East 115th Street resident, he was seated at about 10:40 a.m.-though undoubtedly no less formidable a sentry than if he'd been standing at attention-when his boss approached him from the rear, shook his head forcefully from side to side and stated, "Don't fall asleep!"

The doorman said the attack caused injuries to his neck and also his upper and lower back, to say nothing of the pain and suffering. He sought medical assistance on his own and then filed a complaint against the super for assault.

Discourtesy Call

Another doorman-related incident demonstrates one method that building workers use to keep themselves occupied during the dog days of summer, when their tenants are off in the Hamptons or Tuscany. In this case, a 26-year-old receptionist at a doctor's office at Park Avenue and 88th Street told police that she recently received two undesired calls.

In both, a male caller stated, "I'm calling because I need a rectal exam." A police report did not reveal whether proctology was the specialty of the physician for whom she worked. The receptionist wasn't amused.

"Stop fooling around," she demanded, provoking the perp to become even less discreet. "You can bill me when I -," he said, and proceeded to describe an unmentionable act. The victim hit star-69 (when will obscene callers learn they no longer have cover?) and, sure enough, got the doorman at the same Park Avenue building where she worked.

She asked to speak to his supervisor. Instead, a second doorman got on the line and said, "Don't call here," and then hung up. The receptionist took his advice: Rather than calling back, she filed a complaint with the 19th Precinct against both of the men for aggravated harassment.

Dry Cleaner Gets Taken to Cleaners

Some crooks stick up stores with guns. Others-such as the fellow who visited a dry cleaner at 1736 Second Avenue on July 10-manage to snooker their victims out of their profits with a bit more sophistication. The perp, described as a 50-year-old male in wire-rimmed glasses, arrived at around 11:30 a.m. and purchased two lint removers at three dollars apiece, paying with a $100 bill.

The woman behind the desk gave him $94 in change. Then (perhaps inspired by the age-old hustle famously employed by Moses Pray in Paper Moon ), the suspect asked for singles for one of the $10 bills he got back. The dry cleaner complied again. On second thought, the customer decided, the lint removers were too expensive. Now he asked for his $100 bill back.

So his obliging victim returned his C-note, and the perp returned to her what she thought were all the bills she'd given him-the 10 ones and a bunch of 20's. Then he departed.

After he did, she discovered that after their various transactions, he'd handed her a mere 14 dollars and had absconded with the rest of the cash. He did, however, leave the lint removers behind.

Slick Sisters

There are those who would argue that shoplifting is a phase, a passing outlet for adolescent rebellion. But that explanation probably offers little comfort to a mother who's just had both of her daughters get nabbed at the same time for shoplifting at Barneys.

That's what happened on July 14, when security guards at the Madison Avenue department store arrested two teenagers-same last name, same West 92nd Street address-at 3:15 p.m., as they were trying to leave with thousands of dollars in stolen goods.

The younger of the two suspects-and the more ambitious, if the quantity of merchandise with which she attempted to flee is any indication-was observed by a store detective entering a dressing room with "numerous" items of clothing and emerging with far fewer. The 16-year-old-described as 5-foot-8, 135 pounds, blond-haired, blue-eyed and wearing shorts, a white T-shirt and sandals-was stopped and searched as she attempted to leave the store through its 61st Street exit. Ten items for which she'd neglected to pay were recovered. The duds, valued at $1,444, included Theory, Seven jeans and Co-Op.

In a separate complaint, her 18-year-old sister-described as 5-foot-6, 125 pounds, with long black hair and blue eyes-was observed about the same time entering a dressing room with a pile of clothing and coming out with fewer items. Though her grand total amounted to a more modest $616, her penchant for designer names was no less severe. Her items included a $205 Rozae Nichols top, a $141 pair of Seven jeans, two Theory tops (one black, one white, and valued at $90 and $100, respectively) and a Juicy Couture skirt priced at $80. She was also nabbed as she tried to leave the store. Both siblings were charged with grand larceny.

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.

The name was lost to me forever in the din.

Beppe is loud, but it's the noise of chatter, not pounding music. It's a warm, friendly place with a nice staff. (How often, when you're trying to decide upon a wine, has the waiter steered you to a bottle $10 cheaper than the one you ordered because he feels it's a better choice?) The imposing fellow patrolling the room in a white chef's coat, a sprig of rosemary in his breast pocket, is the owner, Cesare Casella. His face is straight off a Roman coin, with an aquiline nose and a close beard. Peeking out from beneath his red trousers are red Converse high-tops. He named the restaurant after his grandfather (it's a nickname for "Giuseppe"), the farmer whose picture adorns the menu. On the walls are black-and-white photographs of Tuscan villagers eating, preparing or selling food. Mr. Casella's family owns Il Vipore in Lucca, where he earned a Michelin star just before he moved to New York in 1993. He became executive chef at Coco Pazzo in its heyday and soon after launched its sister restaurant, Il Toscanaccio. With Beppe, he has gone to great lengths to recreate the rustic look and flavors of Tuscany. He imports the line of products on display at the door–chestnut honey, heirloom beans and extra-virgin olive oil–and he even has an herb garden on the roof.

One night, as four of us drank a Chianti classico that might well have come from the same estate as the deep-green olive oil into which we were dipping our bread, I was reminded of a summer I had spent in "Chiantishire," that part of Tuscany where the valleys ring with English voices and villas are filled with Londoners busily composing memoirs of their battles with Italian workmen. There, each meal began with a spread of salami, sausages and prosciutto like the one we were eating now, and we never tired of it. At Beppe, however, we didn't stop with the cold cuts; we pressed on to Mr. Casella's wild mushrooms on polenta crostini and his braised black cabbage (cavolo nero) spread over grilled country bread and topped with poached quail eggs. Terra-cotta dishes arrived containing a creamy cauliflower gratin (which bore no resemblance to the dreaded cauliflower cheese of my English childhood) and a terrific stewed eggplant dish topped with melted pecorino.

On this visit, our neighbors were typical of another sort of vacationing American you see in Italy: the doomed young newlyweds. They had yet to order, but already had run out of conversation. "Does your mother still go to confession?" asked the young man in desperation. (As if he cared!) She didn't know. But if Catholicism was a distant vestige of her Italian heritage, so was that country's food. The husband tried in vain to persuade her to try the chicken livers, the homemade sausage or even the roast chicken with escarole. She was having none of it: "I just want a salad … no wine."

Too bad. For Mr. Casella's food, if a trifle uneven, is bold and generous, loaded with oil, rosemary and garlic, and meant to be eaten with a good bottle of local red wine. He calls his style "cucinaruspante"–free-range cooking–which uses Tuscan ideas and ingredients from all over Italy and America. Some dishes hark back to the 16thcentury, such as Pontormo, a tossed salad of soft scrambled eggs, pancetta and greens that gets its name from Florentine Renaissance painter Jacopo Pontormo. It looks like a still life that's been put into a blender, but the flavors and textures mingle wonderfully on the palate. You can also begin with cozze–plump, pan-roasted mussels with garlic, parsley and black pepper–or calamari marinated with thyme, flash-broiled and served with a lively beet and squash tartare. In an interesting twist, mackerel is made into a thick stew with tomatoes, onions, black olives and lemon. But some notes are off, such as the focaccia "sandwich" with octopus that arrived ice-cold on the antipasto platter, and the ramerino: bland, paper-thin tuna that had been roasted with rosemary a bit too long.

Beppe is still settling down, so the food is erratic. A risotto made with farro and topped with stringy duck stew tasted like leftovers. But an "11 herb" pasta–thin, green-flecked strands topped with a rich herb pesto–was extraordinary. A filet of John Dory was simmered in a light herb broth seasoned with fennel, lemongrass and ginger in which floated button-shaped discs of herb pasta. It was almost too restrained. Shrimp, marinated in grappa and rosemary and sautéed with chestnut honey, sounded strange but worked nonetheless. The freshest shrimp have a hint of sweetness, and the dash of honey made the point.

Just a couple of months ago in Tuscany, restaurateurs and butchers staged a mock funeral for bistecca alla fiorentina, which has been banned until the end of the year in the country because of mad-cow disease. Beppe's menu is without a T-bone; instead, Mr. Casella plays it safe with a grilled strip steak sliced and topped with herbs. Spare ribs "Tuscan cowboy-style" were slow-cooked and falling off the bone in a thick tomato-garlic sauce with beans and broccoli rabe.

Desserts put a twist on traditional Tuscan specialties. They included a lovely plum tart with ginger sorbet and panna cotta, and a flourless chocolate cake with mascarpone and bitter orange sauce. Cactus-pear sorbet isn't a dish you'd expect to see on the Tuscan table, even for Tuscan cowboys. It was refreshing and pleasantly acidic. But my favorites were the lemon soufflé cake with candied lemon rind and the panini con gelato, a buccellati sandwich filled with mascarpone and ice cream, like a Tuscan version of baked Alaska.

Beppe rounds out the new crop of restaurants in the Flatiron district, which also includes Craft (minimalist), Tamarind (Indian fusion), Aleutia (trendy) and Fleur de Sel (French). It's expensive, with pastas costing around $18 and main courses from $23 to $29. But it delivers good, accessible food and some wonderful wines. Now if they'd just do something about the tourists ….

Beppe

* *

45 East 22nd Street

982-8422

Dress: Casual

Noise level: High

Wine list: Exclusively Tuscan

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses $23 to $29

Lunch: Starting soon

Dinner: 5:30 to 11:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

As I was sitting there on a recent night, tucking into a thin-crusted pizza and a glass of chilled pinot grigio, I realized I had been there before. Va Tutto used to be a nondescript, old-fashioned Italian restaurant where I would come with my son when he was still in his stroller. Around that time a friend of mine, who is very beautiful, brought in her baby, who started to cry. After a few minutes, the waiter appeared with a tray containing a cork and a glass of brandy.

"The gentleman over there sends it with his compliments." he said. "He says dip the cork in the brandy and put it in the baby's mouth. It will make her sleep."

Outraged, she looked over at the gentleman. Beaming across the room, at a table surrounded by his henchmen, was John Gotti.

Now Mr. Gotti is in Marion, Ill., getting his meals delivered through a slot in his door. The food at 23 Cleveland Place has certainly changed since his time. There are still veal meatballs on the menu, but they're grilled, and they're served with fried sage instead of piled on spaghetti, and they're topped with Parmesan that's not grated but shaved. The waiters aren't in tuxedos, but–like one who sported cropped bleached hair and a matching goatee–tend to look like actors in a Jim Jarmusch movie. The restaurant draws a very different crowd, too–young and hip, in strap dresses and sandals, henna tattoos

and T-shirts.

A blue flag emblazoned with the restaurant's name hangs out front, next to a French bistro that was completely empty when we walked by one rainy night. (Perhaps they have a covered garden in the back.) Va Tutto, by contrast, was full. The long, narrow room has a small bar and a few tables in front; a banquette stretches along an open brick wall that leads to a dining room in the back, where there's a brick fireplace. Beyond is the garden. Its only drawback is the green garden chairs, which are supremely uncomfortable. Votive candles are placed on the tables in delicate wrought-iron filigree cages, but since the latter aren't lined with glass, the wind usually blows the candles out.

Chef Maria Giordano Lupo, who used to be an assistant chef at Gotham Bar and Grill, spent several weeks in Italy working in restaurants and on farms and vineyards before she reopened the restaurant. Her food is not piled up in architectural heaps, Gotham-style, but is straightforward and uncomplicated, with zesty, strong flavors. Some of it is very good indeed, beginning with the fruity olive oil and crusty bread that is placed on the table when you sit down. The wine list is well priced and has interesting selections from small Italian vineyards.

The fritti misti of vegetables–green tomatoes, beets, eggplant and beet greens–arrives sizzling in an airy batter, with a perfectly balanced lemon vinaigrette. Baby calamari, tender and lightly charred from the grill, are matched with a coarse-grained polenta and greens. The grilled veal polpetti (meatballs) are wonderful, and I'd go back just for those. Green salad is fresh but has too much vinegar in the dressing. I was surprised by the plate of cold meats, which consists of dried sausage, prosciutto and slivers of fresh figs, the meats all chopped in small squares. Why? A trio of crostini (tomato and basil, dolce gorgonzola and salami, chicken liver and sage) is pleasant but nothing special.

The restaurant's wood-burning oven turns out pizzas and roasts; steaks and chops are delivered from its wood-burning grill. The pizzas have thin crusts and can be topped with interesting Italian cheeses–caciotta, fossa and scodellato–porcini and truffle oil, or simply with tomato-and-basil "margherita." The calzone, puffed up like a giant slipper, is delicious, stuffed with a sharp, creamy cheese and prosciutto.

The ravioli of the day were plump, gossamer pillows filled with golden beets. Campanelle is tossed with an intense sauce made with roast tomatoes and garlic, with diced smoked prosciutto and peas. The rice for the seafood risotto was undercooked to the point of being inedible, but the seafood–lobster, clams, mussels and baby calamari–was perfectly cooked in a delicate broth.

Roast chicken is the litmus test for a kitchen and Va Tutto comes through. It is juicy under its crisp skin, with lemon and rosemary, and accompanied by slices of grilled polenta. The moist grilled salmon with kale is perked up with pesto and roasted tomatoes. A thick, juicy veal chop is grilled with portobello mushrooms and comes with baby greens, simple and uncomplicated. Steak alla fiorentina is perfectly decent, with mashed potatoes and kale, tossed with raisins and pine nuts, but it is a bit greasy.

Desserts are on the homey side. The panna cotta is light and creamy, with raspberries and a ruby red sauce. The chocolate bread pudding is rich, laced with chianti-soaked dried cherries and pistachio and accompanied by a hazelnut gelato. Roast peaches with crostini and moscato zabaione were the sorts of desserts that go nicely with a glass of moscato on a summer night.

There are still kinks to be worked out, especially with the slow, unfocused service in the garden. A waiter appears at your table with a tray of dishes and looks nonplussed when it turns out no one has ordered any of them, or gives out the wrong dishes to the customers. On a night when rain kept everyone inside, the service, surprisingly, was much better.

Va Tutto is a friendly place and it delivers. I like the garden, but I am perfectly happy eating indoors, too.

Va Tutto

* 1/2

23 Cleveland Place, between Spring and Kenmare streets

941-0286

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Well priced, interesting Italian wines

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses $8 to $24

Lunch: Tuesday and Sunday noon to 3 P.M.

Dinner: Tuesday to Thursday 6 P.M. to 10:30 P.M., Friday and Saturday to 11 P.M.

Brunch: Saturday and Sunday noon to 3 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

Of course. So instead, we began with a selection of antipasto–but it wasn't your usual salami, prosciutto and slab of Parmesan cheese. At Colina, a new Tuscan restaurant that opened last month near Union Square, the platter included fried frog's legs, along with grilled quail, red and yellow beets cut in chunks, wax beans and green beans, pattypan squash and langoustines. Grissini thin as telephone wires, sprinkled with sea salt and wrapped in a ribbon of paper, were placed on the table, along with hot crostini topped with lumps of crab that had been lightly browned under the grill. Spears of grilled white and green asparagus tossed in brown butter with Parmesan were topped with fried quail eggs.

Our waiter brought over a whole pizza pie filled with prosciutto, cheese and olives on a wooden board. He cut the pizza into steaming wedges and passed them around. "I'll leave the rest here for seconds."

These were just the first courses on Colina's "country menu," already enough food tosustainafarmlaborercomfortably through an afternoon's threshing. We were sitting at a long wooden table in what looked like the sort of Tuscan farmhouse that used to be bought for peanuts and respectfully restored by English expatriates around the hills of Chianti. The room is rustic and barnlike, with a slanted ceiling made of terra-cotta tiles, lined with heavy wood beams and hung with pretty modern glass chandeliers. The cement floor is stained a weathered ocher, and the walls are lined with fake windows with wooden shutters. There is an open kitchen at one end, hanging with copper pans, and the hall is lined with pots of rosemary and cedar trees. Piles of red peppers and lemons add a splash of color.

But if the whole thing feels like a room in a department store, it is no accident.

The room is not from Tuscany at all. It's a colonial farmhouse transported piecemeal from Brazil and rebuilt in what used to be the pine furniture department of ABC Carpet & Home. Despite all the money and effort that have clearly gone into it, the place is strangely soulless. It reminds me of the period rooms in museums. They rarely work, and usually for the same reason: that fluorescent light in the fake windows. Doesn't anyone find it odd, at night when it's dark outside, to be sitting in a room where the windows are lit to suggest daytime?

But if the setting feels fake, the food does not.

Colina's operating managers are Jeff Salaway and Mark Smith, owners of Nick and Toni's, and the consulting chef is Jonathan Waxman (of Bud's, Hulot's, Bryant Park Grill and Nick and Toni's in Manhattan), who is overseeing the kitchen with executive chef John Delucie. The menu is rather confusing at first. It is divided into complete meals, a three-course "express" menu with dessert for $45, a four-course country menu with dessert or cheese for $55, a six-course regional tasting menu for $65 (this month it's Lombardy) and a chef's tasting menu for $75. Lunch for $19.99 will continue after restaurant week and is a real bargain. The friendly staff are, for the most part, knowledgeable about the food and the wines on the excellent list (although I did have a waiter one night who seemed to have stumbled in from the furniture department).

The antipasti are set out in the "cantina," the bar room, where you can get light dishes and are allowed to smoke. Although they were pretty good, they looked better than they tasted and weren't as exciting as the rest of the food. I loved the tiny grilled soft-shell crabs I had one night, nicely crisp, with anchovies and peppers on a lemony bed of radicchio. The fritto misto, made with anchovies, squid, slivers of fennel and an aïoli sauce, was also good.

There are intriguing pastas on the menu, too, among them trecce, a rolled short pasta, with tender chunks of roasted lobster tossed in a lobster sauce and dotted with lobster coral. It was marvelous. But I was disappointed in the spaghetti with soggy zucchini flowers in a boring, vaguely creamy sauce with tomatoes and carrots.

Beyond the twinkling copper pots that hang outside the kitchen, Colina boasts a rotisserie and a wood-burning oven and grill. Fish is roasted simply in the oven. The ippoglosso (the poetic Italian name for halibut) on cippolini onions, arugula and cherry tomatoes is the kind of light summer dish I love.

All sorts of birds are spit-roasted, including "free range" pigeon (a term that raised a few eyebrows at my table), which arrived cut in thick, juicy, rare slices served with good Tuscan-style roast potatoes. I liked it better than the spit-roasted pork loin, which didn't have a great deal of taste. But the truly outstanding dish I tried here was the Florentine steak, an extra 10 bucks, but as juicy and tender a piece of meat, underneath a charred crust, as you could wish for. It came with a platter of giant fries on a bed of fried tarragon leaves and sautéed spinach.

We wound up with a fresh fig tart, a thyme-scented olive oil polenta cake with a compote of plums, and stewed cherries with hot zabaglione. These were on a par with the rhubarb compote with lemon cream and meringue I'd had a few evenings previously, which was great (and much better than the bland chocolate mousse and the fruits in a rather stiff jelly).We followed up with the prosecco and a glass of a delicious Italian dessert wine, torcolato.

ABC Carpet & Home is accessible through the back of the restaurant and I'm sure that more than one customer will be inclined toward an impulse purchase or two if they down a few glasses of wine before the store closes. After lunch one day, clutching our leftovers in ABC Carpet & Home shopping bags, we staggered into the store where we were greeted by the last thing we wanted to see for several hours at least–a display of Italian food, complete with jars of Patsy's tomato sauce and boxes of dried pasta.

Colina

* *

35 East 18th Street

505-2233

Dress: Loose

Noise Level: Low

Wine List: Excellent

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Lunch prix fixe $19.99, dinner prix fixe $45, $55, $65 or $75

Lunch: Daily noon to 3 P.M.

Dinner: Daily 6 P.M. to 11 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

"Forget about it," he said. "I'll put you in a cab and go on home."

But after trying one more pay phone, we discovered we were just half a block from the restaurant. We waded down East Ninth Street, past little boutiques and galleries whose charm was totally wasted on us at this time and, shoes squelching, arrived at I Coppi.

Gone were the dangling pay phones and the tenements with their garbage cans chained to the railings of the front stoop: We were in Tuscany. The hostess led us through a beamed, rustic dining room which was warm and cozy, with exposed-brick walls and pinewood floors. It was decorated with ceramic plates and a mural showing the sort of view of the Italian countryside that any self-respecting British expatriate retiring to "Chiantishire" expects to see from the living room of his house.

She seated us near the open kitchen, which was under an archway, where we could see a brick pizza oven and a couple of cooks at work. A wonderful smell of baking bread filled the air.

"This is just the ticket," said my friend, hanging his wet coat over the back of a chair. But he was still not quite himself. "I'm not going to drink anything tonight." Just then the waiter appeared with the wine list. My companion glanced at it briefly. "Well, maybe one glass of wine."

The list is mainly Tuscan with interesting selections from smaller vineyards (including a 1985 Sassicaia for $1,000, if you are in the mood). We ordered a bottle of Chianti Classico and the waiter put a basket of bread on the table. It was that wonderful salt-free bread you get in Tuscany, warm and crusty, tasting as if it had just come out of the oven. We wanted to keep on eating it, so we decided to share an antipasto platter as a starter: prosciutto di Parma, garlicky Tuscan salami, thin slices of bresaola (dried beef), crostini of mashed chicken livers and marinated artichokes. We ate everything, including all the bread.

For the main course, I had rabbit in a marvelous piquant sauce of tomatoes, herbs and black olives, served with polenta. My companion, who was now back in good form, chose roast pork with fennel and mustard greens. It was good too, redolent of herbs and fruity olive oil, though not as good as the rabbit. We also had a side order of cavolo nero, Tuscan black kale, which you don't see on many menus. Coppi serves it in soup with polenta or as a side order with garlic and olive oil, and it's delicious.

For dessert, we had the torta della nonna (grandmother's tart), which was rather dull, and also, because our waiter insisted on it, the tiramisù. "It's such a cliché," my friend complained. But we were glad we tried it because it was rich, creamy and chocolaty, just the thing to wind up a terrific meal.

A few nights later, when I returned with my family, we had another wonderful dinner. We began with carpaccio of tuna–very fresh, paper-thin slices dressed with green peppercorns, herbs and olive oil. My son and I shared a pizza margherita, with a thin, crisp crust topped with tomato, mozzarella and basil. It, too, was excellent.

The game festival was still under way (many of those dishes are now on the regular menu), and when my son saw they offered wild boar, his eyes lit up. In the French Asterix comic book series of which he is a fan, every adventure of the plucky little band of Gauls undefeated by Caesar culminates in a raucous feast with wild boar turning on a spit. At I Coppi, the boar was stewed and served with polenta.

"A little bland but good," was his verdict after a couple of bites.

Pappardelle alla lepre (with wild hare sauce) was not the least bit bland, however, the chunks of pleasantly gamy hare in a dark, winy sauce on delicate ribbons of pasta. Roast pheasant was tender and juicy, served with terrific roast potatoes with rosemary that had golden, crusty skins but were nicely floury inside.

We finished with a dark chocolate mousse topped with whipped cream, and a bowl of panna cotta garnished with slices of orange. "This place is a find," said my husband as we left.

It is a find. I Coppi isn't a typical Lower East Side restaurant at all, showing more of a sophisticated uptown polish. (It reminds me a bit of Il Cantinori, several blocks west.) Prices are high for the neighborhood, with more than half the first courses $11 or over, and pastas around $18 a portion. The restaurant is owned by Lorella Innoccenti, who worked for Joe Allen and Pino Luongo, and her husband John Brennan (who put the place together from salvaged beams from Brooklyn and barn wood). It's very much a family operation: The chef is Ms. Innocenti's mother, Alberta, and her father, Lido, bakes the wonderful bread.

In May, when I Coppi opens its garden (which will be canopied), I will be happy to eat there even when it rains.

I Coppi

* *

432 East Ninth Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A

254-2263

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Expensive, with eclectic selection of Tuscan wines from small estates

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Dinner main courses $13 to $23

Brunch: Sunday noon to 4 P. M.

Dinner: Sunday to Thursday 6 P.M. to 11 P.M., Friday and Saturday to 11:30 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

Whether this was the case or not, the open-necked shirts and casual sweaters seemed at odds with the 50's-style formality of the dining room, with its scalloped boudoir curtains, thick carpeting and dark green ultra-suede banquettes. The restaurant was redecorated a few months ago, and its walls are now covered with dark brown silk and lined with wine cabinets. The tables (those along the sides of the room are rather jammed together), are set with candles, white cloths and linen napkins folded in stand-up triangles, no less. Muzak tinkles away on the sound system and there is a TV over the bar.

No sooner had I sat down than my attention was diverted by four young men in dark suits who were seated at the next table. "He's got witnesses," said one of them. "He can nail him."

This made it rather hard to concentrate on the menu.

"There are things we're incapable of bringing out from a flow standpoint," said his colleague, somewhat obtusely.

Lawyers.

A friendly waiter, who wore a ponytail and carried one hand behind his back like an English butler, put down a basket of focaccia on the table and took our order.

The chef at Chianti, Scott Conant, is not an Italian, but a 27-year-old American who trained first at San Domenico and then at Il Toscanaccio with the master of Tuscan cooking, Cesare Casella. He stays firmly within tradition when it comes to the classic preparations and doesn't attempt to put together combinations for the sake of novelty. This is the sort of cooking you hope to find when you go to Tuscany. To start, I couldn't resist the marinated tuna (which replaced Alaskan salmon that day) with shavings of bottarga (pressed tuna roe), sprinkled with pearls of caviar. The rich taste of the tuna was cut by the strong, tangy roe, and the combination was extraordinary. Chunks of grilled octopus were lightly charred, chewy but tender, coated with a delicate olive oil. And the fritto misto, a pile of shrimp, calamari, artichokes, eggplant and zucchini in the lightest, most delicate herb-flecked batter imaginable, was one of the best I've had anywhere, including Italy. Also good was the fricassee of wild mushrooms with soft, creamy polenta, topped with grana padano and white truffle oil–my kind of food. Meanwhile, things were heating up at the next table.

"I don't like litigating in Federal District Court. They dance around the edge," said one young man, waving his fork in the air. "We gotta get tough."

His friend agreed. "Hey, this is the real world."

My real world by this time consisted of a special of the day, a plate of perfectly cooked, chewy orecchiette tossed with little chunks of bacon and broccoli di rape. Mr. Conant has a sure hand with pasta, from his simple homemade thin spaghetti served in a plum tomato and basil sauce to a special of pappardelle topped with a rich ragout of wild boar.

No self-respecting New York Tuscan restaurant these days is without a wood-burning grill, and Mr. Conant makes good use of his. The salmon, flavored with garlic, olive oil and fresh porcini, was crackling on the outside and moist and perfectly cooked within. I was a bit disappointed with the Black Angus Florentine steak, which didn't have a great deal of flavor, although it was cooked just right. It came with a rather sweet sauce of red wine and cassis flavored with apples, honey and juniper. I preferred the humongous veal chop, burnished, pink and juicy, served with crisp sweetbreads, mushrooms and caramelized shallots.

By the time dessert arrived, the lawyers were onto the subject of employee morale and looking around for their bill. Too bad they missed the fabulous cannoli, which were made with a delicate sesame tuile wrapped around a light, orange-scented mascarpone mousse. Also offered were a good crostata with plums and a pleasant apple tart with a thin crust. Biscotti, shaped like Olmec statues, came with a dark chocolate sauce for dipping.

I wondered whether the lawyers had been "walk-ins" or if they'd come all the way uptown from the Federal courthouse just for dinner. Chianti may feel like a neighborhood restaurant in many ways, but as far as the food is concerned, it's well worth a journey from any part of town.

Chianti

* *

1043 Second Avenue, at 55th Street

980-8686

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Expensive, Italian and American, with interesting Tuscan wines

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses lunch $9.75 to $17.25, dinner $13.75 to $28.50

Brunch: Sunday noon to 3 P. M.

Lunch: Sunday to Friday noon to 3:30 P.M.

Dinner: Sunday 5:30 P.M. to 10 P.M., Monday to Thursday to 11 P.M., Friday and Saturday to 11:30 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor