Sean Corbett photo

The savory scallops, here served flambe

Nicholas Roberts Fine Foods
75 Main St., Norwalk. (203) 229-0035,
www.nicholasroberts-finefoods.com

Traveling down Main Street in Norwalk, you might pass Nicholas Roberts Fine Food right by. That would be a mistake — culinary delights lie beyond its unprepossessing exterior.

Owner and executive chef Robert Troilo has transformed a basic blah, Formica-floored, ceiling-tiled space into a hip little 28-seat dining room with Ikea tables and chairs, and walls painted with mellow metallic squares. His menu of "contemporary cuisine with an American soul" has so many appealing-sounding dishes that it can take a while to make up your mind. There's nothing unfamiliar — think short ribs, roasted chicken, and organic salmon — but he jazzes up the dishes with intriguing sauces, salsas and aolis. He has a fine sense of how to contrast and complement salty, sweet, bitter, mild, acidic, creamy flavors and textures. The salmon, for instance, is topped with blood orange fennel salsa, and accompanied by wilted greens and sweet parsnips.

The prices are reasonable, especially when you consider the quality of the food. At lunch, prices range from $5.75 to $9.75, and at dinner from $15.50 and $21.95. Troilo says you can get out the door for a three-course dinner at $35 a person.

I suggest you start with the homemade lemonade. It is beautifully presented with a blackberry, blueberry and raspberry and mint leaf suspended on top of the ice, and a sugar cane baton that you can chew on.

We also started with the scallops ($9.95) and the crawfish beignets ($8.50). Three large cumin-crusted scallops were served on a scallop shell artfully decorated with green squiggles of a thick coconut cilantro curry sauce. Beneath the scallops was a bed of creamy and crunchy corn pudding of fresh kernels in a béchamel made with corn cob broth. The scallops were seared on the outside, moist on the inside. The dish tasted even better than it looked.

Crawfish beignets, accompanied by spicy Cajun aioli, were dense with crawfish, and bits of fresh red and yellow pepper, scallions and cilantro, bound in batter and deep-fried.

For the entrees, I was lured by one of the specials: rack of lamb ($28; the most expensive item on the menu) served with rosemary pomegranate sauce. The plate was so awash in sauce it threatened to subsume the garlic-mashed potatoes. But I can't complain when the sauce, which Troilo makes from fresh pomengranate seeds, was so tasty — savory and sweet with just the right amount of salt.

Three double-cut lamp chops were cooked exactly as I'd ordered them, rosy pink. The portion was hearty — I took one double chop home. The garlicky fresh spinach had been briefly sautéed so that the leaves were still vibrant green and full of life.

Troilo's chili-dusted boneless pork loin stayed just on the right side of not dry. It was served with mustard greens, whose pungent bite was mellowed by sweet apple cider, and the corn pudding. A smear of mustard sauce was painted onto the plate.

Troilo is also an excellent baker. He doesn't load his desserts with sugar. The flavor of the ingredients comes through. The lemon sabayon tart is a silky delight on a crunchy pine nut crust. The pear tarte tartin's layers of thinly sliced of pear have absorbed the caramel without overwhelming the fruit's natural spiciness. The crust was flaky and buttery. The tart was topped by a scoop of coffee ice cream. The molten chocolate cake, served with fresh blueberry compote, was deliciously light at first bite. It released a flood of chocolate — perhaps at bit too much. I would have liked more cake, less chocolate.

I brought five opinionated women to lunch at Nicholas Roberts, and they each found something to order, the soup of the day (corn chowder), a salad with seared scallops, a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and sun-dried tomatoes, and a tuna club sandwich. (The tuna had been quickly seared, leaving a fashionably rare interior.)

I ordered the hamburger, figuring one test of a kitchen is how it does the basics. The "NRG" burger is a big soft round of ground beef topped with cheddar cheese, thinly sliced caramelized onions, mushrooms and bacon on a soft bun. It was too big and messy to pick up, I quickly realized. It was good, but I kind of regretted not ordering something more interesting. There are so many things on the menu I still want to try.

Lunch comes with either mesclun salad, french fries or a side from the deli case (baked beans, plantain and quinoa pilaf, potatoes and bacon salad — to name a few.) The fries are terrific. Thin, brown, crunchy and salty, they are ideal bistro-style fries.

Troilo, a back-of-the-house guy, is doing front-of-the-house stuff, acting as host and waiter while expediting dishes. He's also running his catering business — and baking. He's happy to bring you water, but first he has to get the cheesecake out of the oven. He seems a little stressed, but it's the stress of a hands-on business owner, a perfectionist who is doing everything from scratch to his exacting standards.

He is proud that his staff has stayed with him since he started the catering business six years ago. He opened the restaurant two years ago, and it's filling up Friday and Saturday nights. On a recent Thursday, the restaurant was half-full.

The ultimate question is: Would I go back? The answer for me and for those five opinionated women was a resounding yes.