By Paul Reidinger

WE CAN BE fairly certain that Oscar Wilde, who as a media hound was slightly ahead of his time, would approve of a pub bearing his name – even if, as with Wilde Oscar's, a new such place in the borderland between SoMa and the Mission, the name is wittily (beg pardon) inverted. And surely he would like Wilde Oscar's signage, which features a notably flattering likeness of the writer, patron saint of long-haired, sexually ambiguous scribblers, whose line persists to this day, if I may drop a 16-ton hint. Wilde's black teeth are tastefully omitted, his pocked skin decorously smoothed. Such is the dignifying, if not dignified, art of portraiture.

Lest we forget, Wilde was Irish (born in Dublin), and his mastery of the English tongue was probably at least as irritating to the revenge-minded English as was his widely remarked feasting with rent-boy panthers. One reminder of Wilde's Celtic roots is his fabulous full name – Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, so memorably intoned by James Mason, as the prosecuting barrister Carson, in the movie The Trials of Oscar Wilde – set in gold letters above Wilde Oscar's door. (Other Wilde witticisms and epigrams are similarly recorded elsewhere on the forest green-and-burgundy walls.)

Another is the food, which is noticeably though not utterly Irish. And I am not just talking about the Harp beer on tap, though that is lovely, nor the profusion of potatoes – mostly, and unevenly, fried. I am talking about, say, the Irish bacon in the BLT ($7.25), Irish bacon being, like Canadian bacon, far meatier and less fatty than our pork-belly kind. I am not talking about, although I very much welcomed, the soft, bright green slices of avocado that also found their way into the sandwich, nor the garlic mayonnaise, which gave it a powerful, savory – almost Gallic – kick.

I might be talking about the Bosie burger ($8.25), a large and well-seasoned lump of ground beef topped with cheddar cheese and griddled onions and served on a mustard-smeared bun. Bosie, of course – Lord Alfred Douglas – was the nubile toff who, in the name of ruinous love, helped Wilde self-destruct. But the burger, despite a provocative name, seemed to be untainted by any sort of disgrace, and Bosie himself is otherwise uncommemorated on menu or wall – odd given the scale of his importance in the Wilde myth.

As Ireland was conquered by England in the 17th century – Cromwell, Drogheda, et cetera, a peripheral if bloody venue in Europe's long Protestant-Catholic struggle – it is natural to expect English influences in the cooking. And there they are. The kitchen offers a strong version of fish-and-chips ($8.50), with tubular lengths of breaded, oil-bronzed fish (cod? haddock?) that break up nicely for dipping in the ramekin of tartar sauce. Also on the side: a heap of carroty coleslaw and a pile of the sometimes limp, sometimes crisp, sometimes salted, sometimes not, fries.

A chicken curry ($8.50) – a wealth of shredded meat in a gooey sauce the color of parched earth – sounded another note of English cooking, this time of bad English cooking. There are few curries of any sort I don't like, but this one tasted a bit too strongly of canned curry powder for my taste. Per the law of unintended consequences, the limp fries on the side of the plate shone with a glory that would not otherwise have been theirs if the curry had been a bit fresher.

Of course there are plenty of American dishes on the menu, too: a creamy, potatoey clam chowder with plenty of clams ($3.25 for a cup), a quesadilla ($5.75) heavily – perhaps too heavily – fortified with raw onions, and a chocolate mousse cake ($3.75) of cloudlike lightness.

But Wilde Oscar's strongest appeal is surely its ambience. It is essentially a gay pub: an institution common in Europe but little known on these shores. Our gay bars come in many flavors – cruise, dance, country-western, leather, to name just a few – and we are equally blessed, if that is the word, with gay restaurants, but the sort of welcoming, low-intensity camaraderie that bathes Wilde Oscar's is a much harder atmosphere to come by in this country. To be able to drink, flirt, talk, eat, and listen to fabulous '80s songs – we carbon-dated ourselves by being able immediately to identify "I Ran," "Safety Dance," and "Just What I Needed" – all at the same time and under one roof, is the sort of mellow experience that sooner or later will appeal to even the wildest at heart.