By Paul Reidinger

POLARIZATION IS NOT merely a hideous word but, these days, a hideous cliché. (All words ending in "-ization" are hideous, cliché or not, and should be scrubbed from the language.) Red states, blue states, et cetera. One's eyes glaze over as endless chronicles of division and divisiveness are reported in the morning paper or on the evening news. Worst of all: there is truth in these tales, no matter the banality with which they are so relentlessly told. Ours is a time more fractured than most.

Yet there are signs of hope and even of reconciliation. One such is Geranium, a Bernal Heights restaurant that opened in May with a menu of "vegetarian comfort food." Geranium – like, say, Firefly in Noe Valley – sees a paradise in which vegetarians and omnivores can happily break bread together with everyone feeling satisfied and uncompromised, but it approaches that paradise from a novel direction. Whereas Firefly has long woven vegetarian dishes into its omnivore menu without showing a seam, Geranium offers food in which many an omnivore could take meaty pleasure without perceiving that there is, in fact, no flesh involved.

As a rule I am suspicious of this sort of fake-'em-out vegetarian cooking. The best meatless dishes are the ones that have always been meatless – are not really "-less" anything because animal flesh was never a part of them. We could be talking about falafel or lentil soup or pizza margherita or mushroom risotto or a host of other dishes for which the designation "vegetarian" or "vegan" is nothing more than a latter-day gloss.

We would most likely not be talking about a chili dog. For the heart of any chili dog is the dog, the sausage – and sausages are made from meat, and meat is hard to fake. There's lots of unconvincing meatless meat out there, but the dog buried in the soft baguette that is the frame for Geranium's chili dog ($6.95) doesn't belong to that sad set of impostors. It was tasty and juicy, with just the right spongy-firm texture, and after a few bites I was so impressed and curious that I scraped away the excellent, spicy chili (freighted with gratings of cheddar cheese and a big dab of sour cream) to have a look at the bare hot dog. It was the right color, the right shape. I took a naked bite ... and was convinced.

It must be said that chef Matthew DuTrumble is a fine strategist in these matters. He does not rely exclusively on meat substitutes but deploys those few he knows are most likely to be successful. The other big gun in his I-can't-believe-it's-not-meat! arsenal is the "eat loaf" – a well-seasoned concoction of legumes and nuts that's a little crumblier than the real thing but holds together well enough to be sliced and is quite flavorful. It appears in a sandwich (the preferred destination for leftover meat loaf in the carnal world) and as a main dish ($12.95), with mashed Yukon Gold potatoes, braised dinosaur kale, and a well-herbed mushroom jus, all of which play familiar supporting roles that are doubly important here because their textures and flavors aid the one heavily tinkered-with platemate in seeming at home.

Still, most of DuTrumble's menu consists of dishes that are holistically vegetarian – a bisque of wild mushrooms ($6), say, or a Provençal vegetable potage ($5.75) like a soupy ratatouille (plenty of zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes, with some button mushrooms tossed in) and a cayenne-charged vegetable broth that leaves a pleasurable tingle on the lips. Then there are pizzas, with their long and distinguished meatless lines; DuTrumble offers a strong pissaladière ($10.75), the classic Provençal pie of caramelized onions and blue cheese, given a bit of additional sweetening here by medjool dates, a bit of grassy bite from arugula, and served on an oblong crust that looks like a yeast-based diorama of a hippodrome. Slightly more Californian in its diffusion of flavors is a portobello mushroom pizza ($12.95), with goat cheese, spinach, and pine nuts.

Pasta is equally adaptable to vegetarian purposes, perhaps more so. We particularly liked the "free form" lasagna ($12.95), a chunk of which very much resembled a large ravioli: a loose square of pasta draped over layers of spinach, oven-roasted tomato, and goat cheese, with a rich sherry-walnut cream liberally drizzled around the edges. Too caloric? Then perhaps, with a sandwich, you might have a side salad of cavatappi (hollow corkscrews) tossed with a light but zesty sauce of braised red onions and red-wine vinegar.

There's even a nod to the old school of vegetarianism. That would be the raw almond roll ($5.75), a surprisingly tasty coarse paste of crushed almond, tomato, carrots, sprouts, and cucumber, bound with pesto and swaddled in a chard leaf. It sounds like something desperately whipped up from the vegetable-bin orphanage but turns out to have an almost sushi-like elegance.

The space itself is quite elegant, a once-upon-a-time butcher shop redone by owners Lorraine Garrison and James Allison with an architectural restraint that emphasizes the dining room's high-ceilinged airiness. Here and there, a memento mori: an antique scale, for one, for measuring roasts and chops. It sits on the counter now as a talisman of sorts, a reminder of what was and what is, of worlds poles apart and yet not.

Geranium. 615 Cortland (at Anderson), S.F. (415) 647-0118. Dinner: Tues.-Sun., 5-10 p.m. Brunch: Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.