For too long, great Italian restaurants were scarce in Sarasota. In a city that has ranked fifth in eating out, closely behind New York and D.C., it was shameful. That has changed. A quick drive around town and you can select from a plethora of good Italian restaurants that would be quite at home in more metropolitan locales.

Esca occupies a space on Main Street that started out as a pasta joint, Gastronomia, and has morphed through several iterations. Esca is also the name of a trendy new Italian eatery in New York, the creation of impresarios Mario Batali, Joseph Bastianich and David Pasternack. Our Esca bears no relation; it's presided over by Luigi Doleatto, most recently of Uva Rara.

The interior at Esca, however, does look somewhat like the Esca in New York, which isn't a bad thing. It's open, but provides private nooks and offers an organic feel with elements of rock, slate and wood. The enterprise occupies two stories-the top half a bar and the lower half the restaurant. We entered through the second-story bar and captured a glimpse of the sun setting over Main Street through a large window. Neil Young was the Muzak, and I immediately relaxed and felt, well, hip.

That feeling remained. There's something comforting about an open kitchen, and Luigi leads this one with a casual air. No one seemed uptight, and there weren't a lot of flames shooting toward the second story; mostly a steady stream of waitstaff picking up dishes and professionally conversing.

The food follows suit. Appetizers are good enough to make a meal. I loved the trio of zucchini turbans ($7). The strips of zucchini are crisp, but not raw-no weak-wristed strips of squash here. Each surrounds various fillings-a dollop of veal pâté in one, a bit of salty and rich prosciutto in another, earthy tapenade in the third-and they all nest on a puddle of a sweet, sticky nirvana of reduced balsamic vinegar. Fabulous, but not so carefully crafted as to be unapproachable.

The same attitude surrounds the tuna tartare appetizer ($10). Not quite Italian, but in the essence of the cuisine, the tuna is composed of fresh, fresh ingredients of raw ahi tuna, lightly dressed with a fruity sweet olive oil and fresh lemon juice and festooned with strips of lightly fried leeks.

A lobster salad comes stuffed inside an artichoke ($12), but the crisp, clean salad calls for more acid to give the dish a voice. Skip this one in favor of the mélange of roasted red pepper, grilled eggplant and arugula ($8). Of course, the aged Parmesan cheese adds a distinctive element to the balsamic reduction.

But the veal and porcini ravioli in a rich, earthy demiglace ($18) was my favorite. The little pockets of pasta balance the sweet and savory combination of veal and porcini. A demiglace of veal stock, reduced to pure essence of that meat, completes the plate; then the entire dish is treated to an occasional toasted walnut, which adds another element of rich, nutty character. Extraordinary.

There are a half-dozen seafood selections, including the elusive wild salmon. Some of these speak to an Italian ancestry-a Dover sole gratin with prosciutto. Others are more eclectic-sea scallops St. Jacques in a cream sauce, for example.

Meats are more focused, and I loved the salty character of an impressively tender chicken breast teamed with proscuitto and stuffed with veal pâté. Apparently you can't go wrong with anything incorporating veal or proscuitto at Esca.

Dessert is an afterthought, with the flourless chocolate and almond tart the substantial offering. It's an obscenely rich slab of decadence, but we managed to nibble our way through. A well-made cappuccino helped.

The wine list is a pleasant surprise. About a dozen different and interesting wines are offered by the glass and taste great with the food. Whoever put that together gets my salute.

ESCA

1888 Main St., Sarasota

(941) 365-3722

Credit cards

Reservations recommended on weekends

11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Friday; 5-10 p.m. Saturday (closed Sunday)

Wheelchair accessible

THE REAL THING Blink and you could miss Café Bologna. It's in an nondescript strip off Tamiami Trail, just south of Phillippi Creek Park. There's nothing to catch the eye; I owe my discovery to Marcella Hazan, doyenne of Italian cooking, cookbook author and Longboat Key resident (see "The Essence of Italian" in our April Food & Wine annual). When she invited me to lunch, the clincher was Hazan, with her uniquely gravelly voice, confiding that she almost cried when she first ate at this restaurant, so reminiscent was the food of her native Bologna. We made arrangements to meet, with the caveat that I must understand that this café is a café in the truest Italian sense.