Tasty Decor

The full room was almost painfully noisy, and the food proved an insufficient distraction.

After the dip in execution with the mains, we felt the desserts were almost as wonderful as the best first courses: a chocolate soufflé with mint crème anglaise whose only fault was that it was too small for our competitive spoons; a rich pot de crème layered with butterscotch sauce; and a fresh blueberry and fromage blanc tart.

Jen Siska

A quieter moment at Nua.

Details

Open Sunday through Wednesday for dinner from 6 to 10 p.m., Thursday through Saturday until 11 p.m. Open Saturday and Sunday for brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Reservations accepted. Wheelchair accessible. Parking: valet, $8 at brunch, $12 at dinner. Muni: 39, 41. Noise level: moderate to high.

Goat cheese tart with beets $11
Herbed gnocchi with mushrooms $14
Roasted cauliflower with capers and pine nuts $5
Piquillo peppers stuffed with brandade $9
Grilled rib-eye with gigande beans $28
Salmon with squash and charmoula sauce $27
Chocolate soufflé with mint sauce $8

550 Green (between Columbus and Grant), 433-4000, www.nuasf.com.

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• Manila
• Blue Lake
• Fruits and Vegetables
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When I returned with a single companion for an early dinner, we shared four first courses: the gambas, albondigas, and piquillo peppers, with a rerun of the exquisite gnocchi. They were as good as remembered. The three other dishes were good, if not nearly as stellar: four shell-on shrimp swimming in a peppery broth; half a dozen pale veal-and-pork mushrooms in a bit of creamy almond bread sauce, topped with roasted almonds for crunch; and two pretty bright-red peppers stuffed with salt-cod brandade, sided with a slick of garlicky persillade and some frisée with snipped chives. This time, instead of trying a couple of decent low-end bottles from the extensive wine list as we had the first time, we sampled from among the more than two dozen by-the-glass offerings, cutely separated into "bubbles," "are you blushing?," "white noise," and "seeing red," priced from $5.50 to $13.50 a glass. (These monikers are abandoned on the main list.)

After the starters, brought out in two courses by well-trained and attractive servers, we were still hungry. So we shared the porterhouse pork chop, a thick cut, brought pink as requested but nearly tasteless, and not particularly helped out by its two chunks of crispy polenta, halved Black Mission figs, and heap of baby red chard, the whole not really brought together by a bit of pork jus. Most of the dish was boxed up to go.

The chic room, with its comfy gray-and-rust leather banquette, spidery chrome-and-black-leather barstools and chairs, and strikingly grained wood, was, alas, tastier to me than most of Nua's food.