Sarasota seems to have an insatiable hunger for rustic Mediterranean food. Little Italian eateries are proliferating downtown; the best are small and tightly focused on replicating that loose, friendly neighborhood ambience that has made trattorias all the rage. Uva Rara has all those essential ingredients, including a young, ambitious Italian at the stove-33-year-old Oscar Revelli-DiBeaumont. One of the two owners, he's from Turin in the Piedmont region, where his father owns a vineyard and makes wine.

Uva Rara (which means rare grape) is nestled in Burns Court in one of the bungalows built in the 1920s by Owen Burns. It sits across the street from the town's art house cinema and is near antique and specialty boutiques. As a result, Uva Rara has a discriminating crowd of potential diners nearby every time a movie ends or shoppers want a place to rest. But the restaurant is also within walking distance of several posh Palm Avenue condominiums, which means the 60-seat eatery really is a neighborhood establishment. Pablo Castro, the handsome 29-year-old Argentinean front-of-the-house co-owner, knows quite a few regulars by name and most of the rest by sight. Oscar and Pablo met four years ago in Sarasota and opened Uva Rara about a year ago.

The menu is organized the way it would be in Italy, with several separate courses. We would call it a la carte. What you order is what you get. Side dishes, from appetizers and salads to pasta and vegetables, can be ordered as separate courses, or you can ask for several things to be brought to the table at the same time. It's a mix- and-match kind of thing and it requires a little thought, or else you end up with too much or not enough food. You can also spend a lot more than you intended to. (Prices range from $13-$17 for pastas to around $14 for most veal, fish and chicken dishes. If you want to split something, it will cost you an additional $3.50.)

Menu selections are in Italian with English explanations. When in doubt, ask Pablo or one of the European waiters. They are patient, and you'll love the accents.

On Tuesday, Oscar brings out the ossobuco (with rice and saffron), a stew made with a calf's hind shank that takes him a minimum of four hours to prepare. Chef buys the ingredients and makes it on Monday. Then he lets it rest for 24 hours for the flavors to fully mingle. Thursday is risotto night. And nearly every night, some regular customer asks for the sea bass, even though it is not on the menu. Chef Oscar loves to do seafood; he also delights in preparing a veal chop. He cooks it medium-rare with a narrow ruff of fat clinging to the edges, because that's where a lot of the flavor is. The health- conscious will virtuously trim it away. My willpower isn't that good. But that little rim of fat certainly is. The veal is done with a light sauce and mushrooms. You also cannot go wrong with the veal sautéed in rosemary, capers, lemon and white sauce or the veal dressed up with fresh tomato or sautéed with portobello mushroom in a marsala wine sauce. If you are a member of PETA, this is not the restaurant for you.

Gnocchi, which in Italian means "little lump," are light, fluffy dumplings usually made of potatoes or semolina flour. These are something most American cooks don't attempt at home, so it's nice to be able to order them here with four-cheese sauce or the restaurant's signature pesto.

Pasta-rigatoni-is made fresh daily with sauces that are light, fresh and fragrant. When a dish of pasta comes to the table, you really do think you are sitting in a trattoria in southern Italy. The restaurant's kitchen is too small for more complicated pastas; but on a recent trip home, Chef Oscar bought a new pasta machine he plans to use in an off-site kitchen (the courtyard space that used to be Junie Moon Cafe) to create generous pans of lasagna, ravioli and more.

The restaurant used to be a wine bar and has artful grape and vineyard reminders of the past owners on the walls and wooden wine racks in all the rooms. The wine list lives up to the décor. Wines by the glass can be had for $5.50 each, but the bottles offer better value. The proprietors stock many wines in the $20 -$25 range, which should encourage patrons to match the cuisine to an Italian regional wine. We enjoyed a '99 Castellani Primitivo di Puglia (a red Zin from old vines), an excellent buy at $21.