By Paul Reidinger

FOR A PLACE whose name suggests curvature of some sort, Circolo Restaurant and Lounge is notably rectilinear, inside and out. From the street it looks like a squared-off barn: a faceless, reddish orange box sitting at a corner that was, once upon a fairly recent time, choked with limousines disgorging the (briefly) nouveau riche of a (briefly) new economy, and with brand-new Mercedeses awaiting the ministrations of the valets while their drivers hustled inside – into Gordon's House of Fine Eats, then the occupant of the boxy barn.

That was then, this is now, and, now as then, the lighting inside is suggestively dim, as at an edgy club. The new managing partner and developer, Jon Mayeda, claims to have "completely redesigned" the space, and perhaps that is so; I don't remember much about Gordon's beyond its vastness and its vast, throbbing crowds. The long, L-shaped bar remains, as does the display kitchen with its long, straight counter. Was the shimmering steel-mesh curtain, which separates the lounge from the main dining room, there in the Gordon's era? Certainly it is there now, and it is a piece of arresting evidence that industrial design details can be warm in addition to beautiful, in a machined sort of way.

Food, on the other hand, is almost always about the earth and about warmth, figurative if not literal, and while Circolo's nuevo Latino-Asian menu doesn't much resemble Gordon's new-American angle of approach beyond a claim of newness, the cooking is as good as Gordon's and, if anything, slightly more coherent. And if it reminds you of the cooking at Limón, it is only because Limón's kitchen gods, Martin and Antonio Castillo, also rule the stoves at Circolo.

To the extent that there's a difference in food between the two sibling restaurants, it's one of elaborateness, as revealed in the sublistings on Circolo's menu, which lay out ingredients and combinations of ingredients in lawyerly detail. The cumulative effect of this exhaustive precision is to suggest a straining to innovate with pristine ingredients while announcing same; to me the apotheosis of this Möbius effect resides on the dessert menu, wherein we find the tiramisu-like pastel de tres leches ($8), soaked in a maracuya-rum sauce and served with candied banana coins and a diced-mango salsa – with, on the side, a corn husk stuffed tamale-style with blue-corn ice cream. There is so much going on here, so much to read and digest and then eat and digest, that ordering the dish turns out to be nearly as much a matter of coping as enjoying, though in fact all the many components are delicious and do work together, and in the end one does enjoy it.

Not all the cooking is quite so determinedly complex. One of the best dishes is the unassuming tallarín ($15), a kind of Peruvian yellow-curry pasta with either prawns or beef, the latter appearing in wafer-thin strips that have a pleasant, vinegary tenderness, like sauerbraten. The ingredients here are well integrated; they do not scream for attention but do achieve a harmony of flavor as you dig in. A comparably straightforward starter for the tallarín might be the arepas ($5), a pair of corn-cake disks, nicely crisped like latkes and scattered with some diced, smoked tomatoes – a spare, gracious touch.

The arepas are considered a "side," not a starter, though they are appetizing in the best tradition of appetizers. The actual starters range from the fairly uncomplicated – crunchy quinoa fritters (part of an appetizer trio, $15), sauced with corn puree and cilantro pesto – to such discreetly interesting prospects as eggplant pillows (also part of the trio), stuffed like gnocchi with porcini risotto and duck confit, and canoe-like fresno chili halves (trio again) filled with a potsticker-worthy mélange of shrimp, pork, ginger, and Chinese black beans.

The hungry will appreciate the kitchen's big-plate prowess: a swordfish steak ($22), for instance, stuffed with crab and served atop a peppery bed of chili mashed potatoes and a watercress salad. But the most alluring of the main courses are the trios – of duck ($22) and seafood ($16) – that really amount to self-contained little tasting menus. They offer the additional benefit of not being bloating, which cannot be a bad thing here in the land of the overfed.

The duck plate included a pair of familiar faces (sautéed breast and seared foie gras), along with a creamy potato gratin enriched with confit – altogether a quite European ensemble. The seafood trio, on the other hand, was distinctly Pacific, from halibut rolls laden with bits of bacon and avocado, to ahi tuna sashimi scattered with corn kernels and arranged on a wonton swoosh that resembled a shoe horn, to a layered napoleon of spinach and potato purees, along with some whitefish I did not catch the name of but am sure was not gefilte fish.

Circolo is still very new, of course. It opened in April, in spring, and the kitchen's burst of creativity is springlike in its disorderly verve, its desire to show what it can do. But sometimes the best cooking is about knowing what you could do – and choose not to. Leaving things out can actually add, per the old truism that less is more. How about, say, omitting the lychee granita and coconut crisp that accompany a perfectly elegant coconut flan ($8), or the handsome but anemic strawberry shake that rides along beside a splendidly tart lime tart ($8)? I know they have been included to round out concepts, but the best dishes – of which Circolo already has plenty – aren't really concepts and don't need rounding out.

Circolo Restaurant and Lounge. 500 Florida (at Mariposa), S.F. (415) 553-8560. Dinner: Mon.-Wed., 4:30-11 p.m.; Thurs.-Sat., 4:30 p.m.-2:30 a.m. Full bar. American Express, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Noisy. Wheelchair accessible.