By Paul Reidinger

THE VISTA FROM Café Bella Vista is not the sort of view we generally think of when we think about vistas in the Bay Area, land of las buenas vistas. It is not a view that sweeps over the hilly miles to the horizon, with a bridge tower or skyscraper poking up romantically here and there; it is, instead, a view (from slightly below grade) of a Mission street corner. If it happens to be Carnaval time, the corner can offer plenty of (not necessarily scenic) spectacle. At other times, which is most of the time, it is your basic, hustle-and-bustle urban scene.

In that light, Café Bella Vista might be regarded as a misnomer if not for the fact that the restaurant occupies the ground floor in a building called the Bella Vista Lofts – a newish, multistoried, SoMa-style edifice of the sort that has popped up all over the Mission in the past five or six years. The upper floors of the building no doubt command vistas adored by real estate agents. The ground floor, meanwhile, offers certain commercial if not aesthetic advantages; it is, or should be, highly visible. But storefront spaces in modern loft buildings have a way of being hard even for pedestrians to see. It is easy to imagine walking right past Café Bella Vista, and that would be a pity, because it is well worth finding.

Bella Vista's interior look is very much Barcelona modern: lots of yellowish stone and tile, trimmed with chrome and stainless steel. The tone is at once sleek and warm, and its Catalan quality is not incidental, for the food is also Barcelona modern: broadly Iberian, with some California touches (such as petrale sole) added for local color. Bella Vista might not quite be the resurrection of Lorca, which lived and died too soon just a few blocks away, but for those of us who mourned the loss of that excellent Spanish restaurant, Bella Vista's arrival is auspiciously timed.

As befits a restaurant in a notably earthbound space, the kitchen at Bella Vista cooks in a style we can fairly describe as simple and earthy. (The bespectacled dinnertime chef, Felix Talavan, has the serious and precise look of a scientist whose business it is to be methodical and to brook no nonsense.) There is a fresh, pulpy gazpacho andaluz ($3.75), whose strong garlic charge overcomes the chill of the soup. There is a fine tortilla española ($6.50 at lunch) – a kind of cross between a potato omelet and a quiche, served with strips of roasted red bell pepper and diced tomato. (The tortilla also appears, in little squares pierced by toothpicks, as a dinnertime amuse-bouche; and, also at dinnertime, as an upright triangle in a prix fixe parade of dishes.) And there is a cassoulet-like white bean stew laced with rounds of garlicky sausage, salchicha con frijoles ($6.75), vast enough to feed a yeoman or two.

At dinner, as the restaurant fills with pink twilight, the mood becomes more expansive, and the kitchen's palette broadens. The starters are not called tapas, but they are just the sort of small plates, recombining seafood and garlic in various ways, you would find on many a menu in Spain. Among the most elegant of these choices is the gambas al ajillo ($7.75), shelled prawns sautéed in olive oil, minced garlic, and red pepper flakes, with some parsley and white wine added at the end to make a brothlike sauce.

A choice you probably wouldn't find at a tapas bar in Spain is a prix fixe menu. Bella Vista, on the other hand, offers four courses (plus coffee) for $22. The procession begins with the gazpacho, proceeds through the tortilla, offers for the main event either New York steak or petrale sole, and concludes with a not-small crock of honey-chocolate mousse.

I find petrale sole irresistible, but at the same time there is a certain crimpedness in the way it's usually prepared around here: the whole filets are either breaded, sautéed, and sauced with capers, lemon, and butter, or grilled and served with butter and lemon quarters. Bella Vista's kitchen did dredge the filets in seasoned flour and sauté them until golden, but the pieces of fish were then cut into smaller pieces and heaped into a small stew crock, at the bottom of which lay some spinach, braised in classic Mediterranean style with olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, and raisins.

Across the table, meanwhile, the garlicky prawns gave way to a crock of alcachofas salteasas con jamón y almendras ($7.50) – artichoke hearts sautéed with ham and almonds. And as with the prawns, the sauce left behind was a matter of passionate interest, with both of us dipping into our dwindling supply of bread to mop it up.

To me, the most convincingly European note struck by Bella Vista's kitchen was the adequate salting of all the dishes. Not once, during either visit, did I find myself thinking, This would be really good with a bit of salt, or asking for a salt shaker. The bespectacled man behind the stove plainly understood that the tiniest bit of salt added early, when something is just beginning to sizzle in the pan, is far better than a lot of it added at the end, or at the table – and that cooking involves tasting. The chef should be satisfied that he or she would be willing and happy to eat a dish before sending it out for someone else to eat. That should be a ground rule.

Café Bella Vista. 2598 Harrison (at 22nd St.), S.F. (415) 641-6195. Breakfast and lunch: Mon.-Sat., 6 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner: Fri.-Sat., 5:30-9:30 p.m. Brunch: Sun., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Liquor license pending. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.