FALAI.(Iacopo Falai)(Falai Panetteria)

Before setting up on his own, Iacopo Falai was the pastry chef at Le Cirque 2000, and something of a pastry chef's fastidious showmanship informs his small restaurant on the Lower East Side, which takes a distinctly high-gloss approach to Italian cuisine. Falai has a thing for tiny slivers of dried fruit (which he keeps in little plastic boxes, for decoration), and for such arcana as crosnes (a minuscule root), duck tongues, and shavings of bottarga (dried fish roe). Pastas come flavored with chocolate, pear, almond, chestnut; a buffalo-ricotta-and-wild-mushroom flan features a white bloom of creamy cheese on a sweet crust.

Falai is as adept at plain as at fancy. Cockles on linguini come enveloped in a light filigree of foam, but the main pleasure of the dish is the freshness of the pasta itself. Venison comes relatively unadorned, in dapper little rectangles that are tender and salty. Only very occasionally do you feel that Falai's virtuosity has failed to realize the potential of an ingredient. Monkfish fillets, for instance, are carved into round medallions, as if masquerading as scallops, but lack both savor and ...