The restaurant is a favorite with vegetarians, serving up dishes like Oriental stir-fried vegetables, ratatouille and sweet potato ravioli, and appetizers ranging from grilled fennel to Persian carrot soup.

Best dishes: Oxtail on open-face ravioli, potato ravioli, tuna tartar, goat cheese terrine, sauteed sweetbreads, roast chicken, lamb chops, warm chocolate cake, brioche with caramelized apples.

Acorn squash soup, with its touch of chive and its truffle-sweet potato ravioli (since replaced with a diver scallop and frizzle of smoked bacon) won over even a skeptic.

Other appetizers include oysters with cider and leeks; potato ravioli with two truffle sauces, and terrine of duck liver with blond raisins and black pepper.

Similarly, potato "ravioli" was made from thin slices of potato folded over a potato-and-anchovy filling.

"The workers sit on the back of the trucks eating tuna fish and stare at my guests eating lunch," said the restaurateur, whose patrons are more likely to dine on hand-wrapped sweet potato ravioli.

Then might come potato ravioli in a lemongrass and leek broth, and finally a delicious, original cumin risotto laced with pumpkin seeds, currants and almonds.

Dinner starters include truffled potato ravioli with duck confit, $11.75, grilled pancetta wrapped shrimp with black lentils, $13.25, and coastal mushroom and rabbit tart, $11.50.

And fat potato ravioli sputtering with brown butter and flavored with sage.

But the sweet potato ravioli with shaved Parmesan in bourbon cream sauce was cloying.