At new Alchemist Lounge, a neighborly mix of old and new

If there was any doubt as to whether the new Alchemist Lounge would bridge the gap between old and new Jamaica Plain, the answer was sitting at the bar last Thursday night. In between the two gay guys with a girlfriend and the young tattooed couple was an elderly man, sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a baseball cap and with his head hung down.

We would've struck up a conversation with the guy, clearly a holdover customer from the former Triple D's, but he wouldn't have heard a word: He had noise-canceling headphones on, and his eyes were closed tight.

If they had caught a glimpse of him, Alchemist owners Lyndon Fuller and Relena Erskine would no doubt have been delighted. Fuller and Erskine spent much of their time and energy after buying the place trying to convince neighbors and reporters that they weren't planning to turn one of the city's most beloved neighborhood dive bars into a cliche of gentrification: a martini bar. Well, you can certainly get a martini at Alchemist, but you can also get a beer and a decent dinner for under 20 bucks, which makes the place a lot closer to Triple D's than 28 Degrees. And because of that, only a month or so after opening, the place is drawing a neighborhood crowd that seems to actually represent the neighborhood.

Fuller and Erskine, who live nearby, had called the B-Side Lounge one of their models, and judging from our visit the comparison doesn't seem far off. In the bar area, where Erskine's vibrant abstract photographs hang on the red walls and Gothic lamps the couple bought on Craigslist hang from the ceiling, we order Otter Creek beers on tap and a citron vodka gimlet that is so pucker-producing we have to send it back for some much-needed sugar syrup. It's not until after she seats us and a waitress who recognizes one of us whispers the word that Erskine realizes we're Globies, but from the frantic look of the place, we don't get the sense that it makes much of a difference.

As ``Mellow Yellow" plays on the sound system, our waitress, a zaftig and tattooed version of Bettie Pa ge , brings us some sticky, moist spareribs that live up to half of their billing as sweet and hot, and tender fried calamari whose accompanying feta, olives, pepperoncini, and artichoke aioli help make up for its insipid breading. The soup of the day -- the soup of every day this season -- is chicken with clarified vegetable broth, but it's so tasteless we think less broth clarification, or at least a handful of Parmesan, would be an improvement.

When we order our entrees, our waitress feels compelled to tell us of a recent dream. How did this topic come up? Well, it started with our choice of the baked penne, which she likes so much it has shown up in her night visions. But she also has dreamed recently that the restaurant is replacing all its waitresses with marionettes, which prompts the psychologist at our table to ask if she wants his card. She declines with a laugh and a girlish shrug.

The cheesy penne dish, it turns out, is fine, but it won't show up in our dreams anytime soon. Nor will a burger that included prosciutto ground up with the beef; we're left wishing it had been crisped up and put on top instead. But more positive memories linger, of a fantastic wild mushroom flatbread and of a crispy, gooey potato gratin that accompanied a decent sirloin.

As for dessert, we end up doing without, because our waitress talks us into dessert martinis instead, and we wish we hadn't listened. A rookie move, really, and the kind of thing that would've gotten us, or anybody else, laughed right out of Triple D's.

Alchemist Lounge, 435 South Huntington Ave., 617-477-5741. Entrees $8-$19. Wines $6-$9 by the glass, $21-$48 by the bottle.