Ka' Carlos offers an illuminating Cape Verdean experience

Around the corner from the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, the furniture company is locked up tight, a backhoe sits idle on a patch of dirt, even the windows of the houses are dark. But light is streaming out of Ka' Carlos, a new Cape Verdean restaurant in Uphams Corner, and inside, it's very much alive. People are drinking beer at a long, elegant bar and eating plates of steak topped with eggs and bacon; jazzy Cape Verdean music is playing on the stereo.

Carlos DePina opened his pristine eatery, painted in shades of mint green and mustard yellow, on Jan. 1, replacing the bar he had owned in that spot for 23 years. ''I do this for my people," DePina told the Dorchester Reporter.

Ka' Carlos (it means ''Carlos's Place" in Portuguese, DePina tells us) serves traditional Cape Verdean and Portuguese dishes such as katchupa, a lumpy, yellowy hash of hominy, beans, and pork that isn't much to look at but is greasy and delicious to eat, and feijao pedra, a thick stew of rock beans, pork, carrots, and collard greens so satisfying it can't be good for you. The menu has a few swankier offerings too, namely filet mignon with a red wine demi-glace and cannoli stuffed with crème brulee.

In fact, the entire place is an appealing mixture of down-home and upscale, from the plastic plates adorned with pink roses that look like they're straight from a Midwestern grandmother's kitchen to the gorgeous wooden floors, chairs, and bar. The TV that plays on the surface of the mirror in the women's bathroom and the hand dryers that blast your hands dry in seconds flat are also nice touches.

A little after 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night, the music goes off and the TVs, including a huge screen in the back, are turned up. ''American Idol" is on, and everybody's watching. Normally we're annoyed by blaring televisions in restaurants, but here it's kind of fun. Watching painfully out-of-tune singers desperate to be on TV while eating sauteed octopus and fried yucca turns out to be a pleasant combination.

Canja, a chicken and rice soup, is so salty it pickles the insides of our mouths, and the waitress insists on having the chef make us another bowl; it's still powerfully puckery the second time around but much more palatably so. We also try a grilled whole grouper blackened to a salty crisp and served with rice, potatoes, and an iceberg-lettuce salad; and bife a cavalo, a steak with fried eggs and a few slices of bacon nestled on top, accompanied by fries and rice. Handfuls of Spanish olives on many of the plates add a lovely zing.

By 9 p.m., the place is filling up and ''American Idol" has been replaced by the utterly unenthralling ''Skating With Celebrities." Our waitress is concerned that our entrees remain half eaten, but we assure her it's a matter of quantity, not quality.

DePina has plans for live jazz and blues, dancing, even ladies nights in his spruced-up nightspot, which is open from 12 to 12 every day, and the neighborhood seems ready. When he opens the door to let us out, calling after us to watch our step on the icy sidewalk, the mint-green glow from his restaurant spills out into the darkness.