Buttery makes a smooth transition

The Buttery's new nighttime atmosphere and menu offers a nice spot for people to enjoy dinner in the South End. (WIQAN ANG FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

An early taste of what's new on the restaurant scene

For years, the South End has been a neighborhood surreally short on cafés. You can count the coffee shops using one hand and a couple of fingers. So the South End Buttery's arrival three years ago was a welcome event, despite its idiosyncrasies. For instance, it closed early - 6:30 p.m. So all night, it would sit idle on the corner across from Union Park, that convex street with the verdant median.

Superficially, the Buttery's lure was a result of design. It used its sliver of corner well. The big windows lent transparency. The yellow paint lent familiar, illusory warmth: If your mother's kitchen had a cash register and a massive espresso maker, it might look like this. And all the baked goods sat in a glass display that you could see across the street: Mmm, cupcakes. Those cupcakes quickly became a highly regarded staple, even as they remain curious disappointments: too mealy, too dry, too expensive.

About a month ago, the Buttery took a risk. It expanded back into the building behind the café, burrowed downstairs, and started serving dinner. It seemed fair to be nervous. What if their cupcakes became an apt symbol for the restaurant's prospects: another curious disappointment? As it turns out, the Buttery might be better as a restaurant than as a café. The coffeehouse space becomes a dining room with a table for each giant window, more or less. The prices make sense. The night lighting casts a shimmering glow of romance. And the food works.

As menus go, this one is modest and pretty basic: Italianish. But most of what the Buttery does in the kitchen it does well. The ingredients usually achieve harmony. Aged balsamic vinegar, teamed with shaved parmesan, doesn't overwhelm figs wrapped in prosciutto. And a disassembled asparagus salad, with soft new potatoes and artichoke, was about as good as a disassembled asparagus salad can be. There's a terrific, politely fried filet of cod that comes with fennel that converted a couple of fennel haters into friends of fennel. The roasted chicken, served with a lemony corn, tomato, and black bean salsa and a crackling skin, is one of the tenderest and juiciest in the history of chickens. Salmon with pureed peas sounds simple but, again, that harmony of flavors elevates it to excellence. Gnocchi with red beets is the kind of stretch the menu should be trying more. As the woman who devoured it observed, you could sleep on the gnocchi it's so soft. Oh, snap! Serta, you got served.

If there's trouble with the Buttery experience, it's the confused service. The staff couldn't be nicer, but they haven't worked out the choreography of their table ballet. A set of arriving appetizers interrupted a long-awaited wine pour, and neither server seemed to know who should defer to whom, so their diners worked out the orchestration for them. It was a charming situation, but the charm had its limits.

Life at the bar, which is at the opposite end of the dining room, is pretty charmless. The main dining room won't open for about another month, so anybody waiting for a table waits almost atop the poor folks eating at elevated tables in that bar area, and those people are already eating on top of each other. Yes, this is a place where in order to arrive at or depart your table, another table has to shift aside. It's a nice way to get acquainted with the adjacent couple. But an evening alone with your boo can easily, unwittingly, unwantedly turn into a double date.

Things are a lot more fun back in the café, where a group of diners can puzzle over and argue about the desserts. Earl grey crème brûlée? Really? A mild gender war might erupt as someone in your party assumes such a dessert could have been made only by a woman. He was right, but that's not the point. Better to savor the satisfaction of a good meal and its potential as modern art. Take the gnocchi and beets. They leave behind some vibrant colors. When you're done, you could frame the plate and tell the MFA Jackson Pollock did it.

The South End Buttery, 314 Shawmut Ave. 617-482-1015. www.southendbuttery.com. Entrees $17-20.