By Paul Reidinger

ALTHOUGH IT'S PROBABLY going too far – just – to say that Willie Brown ruined this city, he certainly damaged it in ways that will haunt the rest of us for a long time. Or, turning for a moment to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (as one should do more often) for some tart phraseology, "The evil that men do lives after them" – particularly if the evil involved the building of luxe lofts everywhere and a general exaltation of conspicuous consumption.

It is with a certain sense of relief, then, that one finds oneself walking a neighborhood (the Haight) that has escaped, or at least not been utterly transformed by, the Great Yuppification. The western run of Haight Street is bracketed, true, by a Ben and Jerry's on one end and a McDonald's on the other. But in between it is still brightly scuzzy – still the same stretch of street on which the I-Beam, home of the Sunday tea dance in days of yore, once stood; still much traveled (mainly on foot and skateboard) by the ultrayoung with their fabulously unruly hair.

Where exactly the I-Beam stood, I can no longer say. That is due in part to time's fogging of memory and in larger part to the fact that, on the evening in question, we were looking in the other, the easterly, direction, for a restaurant and wine bar called Bia's. A wine bar on Haight Street! And would that be a paradox, a joke, or another gold-plated, marble-pillared monument to Willie? Answer: none of the above. Bia's is actually a hippie restaurant and wine bar, complete with the requisite potted plants, strings of little white lights, and do-it-yourself paint scheme (in brassy, rather brothel-like reds and yellows), and it not only belongs where it is but proves that the finer things in life do not have to cost a fortune or be packaged to death. Good prosecco is good prosecco whether it is served in a flute of Baccarat crystal or, as at Bia's, a simple one of glass. The glass does the wine proud, thank you, and its modesty helps the wine drinker relax – never a minor matter in any restaurant.

The homemade touches in decor notwithstanding, Bia's is actually quite comfortable. The ceilings are high, the ancient wood floor handsomely weathered, as in a saloon (there is a brief burst of tile as you step inside), the tables comfortably spaced and neatly set with proper cloths. There is also a rear garden to adjourn to, prosecco in hand, if the weather should oblige.

But any kind of wine will do, really, for we the wine-involved. Bia's wine list isn't huge, but it does range broadly through varietals and regions, with perhaps a special emphasis on production from the South Pacific: Australia and New Zealand. The latter turns out some lovely sauvignons blancs, such as a well-balanced bottling from Giesen ($6 a glass), which mutes the grape's characteristic grassiness and provides enough acid to be able to stand up to the muscly food.

And the food is muscly, by which I mean heartily tasty, and – in what seems to be a gathering trend, at least from this trend-spotter's vantage point – noticeably Middle Eastern in influence. Of course, this is California, and that means an almost irresistible tendency to menu grab-baggery, from turkey-avocado sandwiches ($7) to spinach empanadas, the latter part of a three-course $28 fixed-price option and blanketed by melted cheese of an exact squareness that did cause us to wonder. (The prix fixe is $25 if it's before 7 p.m., Sunday through Thursday.)

But the lodestars of the menu, the items to which the eye is inexorably drawn, are dishes of the eastern Mediterranean. (The restaurant's owner, Camran Parast, was born in northwestern Iran.) Some of these are classically Middle Eastern, among them a kofta (part of the prix fixe) – a fried meatball – the size of a baseball. Others merely suggest their debt to the area: an orange bell pepper stuffed with spiced chopped chicken; a thick round of eggplant stuffed with seasoned rice and baked; a lamb burger ($6.50) topped with a blob of feta cheese and red onions left smoky-sweet by grilling. (The accompanying fries were chubby and a little pale – if they were people, they would have been prime candidates for a fat-farm session – but were sufficiently salted to mask their uncrispness.)

The kitchen's lack of pretentiousness and its improvisational sense are virtues of the best sort of home cooking. Still, it is possible to put a foot wrong when dancing culinary arabesques: I did not care for the "mixed vegetable" soup of the day ($5), which was overpriced and insipid even beyond the fact that the mixed vegetables seemed to consist almost entirely of watery, bitter celery.

Well, most restaurants conduct the occasional fire sale from the vegetable bin from time to time. Anyone who's gone to brunch is likely to notice that the list of omelettes is sure to include what home cooks call "leftovers." But at Bia's such duds are the exception, not the rule. And the desserts even manage a low-key eloquence. Crème brûlée, a perfectly thickened custard under a golden deck of caramelized sugar, is served in a finely detailed, oval ramekin that looks like it came from Grandmother's china cabinet. And a chocolate soufflé (order ahead; it takes 15 to 20 minutes to bake) oozes the essence of chocolate onto the plate; for chocoholics, this could be a – could be the – definitive, the Bia, experience.

Bia's Restaurant and Wine Bar. 1640 Haight (at Cole), S.F. (415) 861-8868, www.biasrestaurantandwinebar.com. Lunch: Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Dinner: nightly, 5:30-10 p.m. Brunch: Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Full bar. American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.