By Paul Reidinger

IN FICTION, what is left out, or cut out, is often more important than what gets in, for it's in those blank interstices of writerly silence that the reader's imagination finds space to breathe. Writing about restaurants, on the other hand, though not without its fictive qualities, tends to get stretched on the great rack of factualism, whose imperative is that the writer have visited – and therefore know forevermore – everything about every place.

Of course this is impossible, in part because even the many places one does manage to get to are continuously evolving to and from, and in part because there are, through chance or oversight or not moving fast enough, places one simply hasn't gotten to. Although I've missed a few big deals over the years – Elka springs to mind – I have, like a patient marksman, picked off this and that well-known spot so that, with the passing of years and the taking of opportunities, the list of must-hit places I am aware of not having hit has grown quite short. In fact the lacuna list is now down to one name, maybe two, since in the past few weeks I finally managed to score visits to the venerable Acquerello and Dana Tommasina and Margie Conrad's nearly as venerable Woodward's Garden.

The latter I had made attempts on before, mostly in the middle 1990s, when the restaurant was famously itty-bitty (a handful of tables) and riding its initial surge of popularity as an oasis of California cuisine most improbably secreted under a concrete freeway viaduct on the site of a onetime amusement park. The setting (so similar to that of the Singers' house in Annie Hall, which lay directly beneath the roller-coaster tracks at Coney Island) was full of rough urban romance. Despite or because of all the pavement, sustainability (though perhaps not local foraging) was an early theme at Woodward's Garden, and it has proved to be a persistent one, even as the roadway overhead has uneasily morphed and remorphed in response to various ballot initiatives and the restaurant itself has grown, expanding to the northwest into a new dining room whose spare, rectangular airiness and flush of pastel green cast a spell like that of an old chapel at twilight on some rocky Mediterranean island.

We made it only to the threshold of that alluring room, coming to rest at a candlelit table along the curtained windows from which we were able to watch, as a kind of amuse-oeil, a howling, light-spinning law-enforcement SUV come hurtling along Mission Street, only to ricochet from the dead end and speed away in the other direction. Was there an actual emergency, we wondered as we helped ourselves to warm bread from the basket (it arrived almost immediately), or was the squealing Ford driven by some stuntman as part of a cop-spoof flick?

This urgent question was soon dropped from consideration so that we might ponder the menu card – not the easiest job in the dim light, though the votive candle, passed from hand to hand like a flask of brandy on a cold night, turned out to have practical as well as aesthetic value. If you are sick of small plates, you will like Woodward's Garden, which observes the traditional divide between starters and main courses, with about a half-dozen of each. Seasonality is a central principle, and as this is blood-orange season, I was pleased to find sections of that voluptuous ruby citrus matched up with coins of golden beet as an accompanying salad to a pair of cod cakes ($10) – nicely crisp disks with a favorable fish-to-bread-crumbs ratio and dabs of luminous aioli. Across the table, ribollitta ($6) – "reboiled" – a Tuscan soup-stew dish rendered here in wintry guise with cannellini beans, diced carrots, and spinach.

In the usual case, one would shun off-season salmon as almost certainly farmed and therefore odious, but the menu card reassured on this point ("wild steelhead"). The grilled filet ($19) reposed on a beanbag-like pad of Puy lentils liberally flavored with bacon and dotted with halved sunchokes, while around the edge of the plate danced bits of frisée like the heads of nappy-haired little blond boys in need of a visit to the barber.

We were quietly shocked by the butternut squash raviolis' ($16.50) need for salt, since the rest of the food had been expertly seasoned. (There are no salt and pepper shakers on the tables: a hint.) On the other hand, the pillows looked sensational – broad and flat like crepes, topped with some braised chard – and a few quick flicks from the salt shaker brought life to the buttery sauce of thyme and Parmesan.

In keeping with the restaurant's thematic balance between innovation and tradition, desserts make generous use of the cocoa bean in unexpected ways. We found a layer of Scharffen Berger chocolate congealed atop a crème brûlée ($7.50), for instance, instead of the usual caramelized sugar; and we came upon a chocolate filling holding slices of d'Anjou pear in a butter-crusty tart ($7), pears being one of those estimable fruits one so often manages to pass over when chocolate isn't involved, which it so seldom is – a lacuna in the craft of pastry, we might say.

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Acquerello cannot match Woodward's Garden in the atmospherics of sweaty freeway concrete, but it has a discreet bourgeois charm all its own. The name means "watercolor" in Italian, and the space was once a chapel whose exposed rafters remain – in part as memento and also as a touch of soaring rusticity that balances the muted elegance of the rest of the decor: the pale yellow walls, the gorgeous fabrics with which the banquettes are upholstered.

The quiet high style of the interior design reminds us that an Italian restaurant is not automatically a trattoria with candles in Chianti bottles, and the food, while recognizably Italian in its ingredients and methods, reminds us that haute cuisine need not be French. Yet Italian high cooking is pretty easily distinguishable from its French counterpart; it is less sauce-driven, and its basic earthiness remains apparent even through elegant elaboration.

You can have carpaccio ($15), for instance, with the customary charge of lemon and caper, though in Acquerello's version the beef gives way to ice-colored halibut, whose thin slices are accompanied by a simple but somehow arresting salad of baby arugula dressed with an anchovy vinaigrette. (Criticism: the fish stuck to the plate.) Parmesan cheese is as basic to Italian cuisine as soy sauce is to Chinese, but it is not every day you find it turning up in a budino ($15), a kind of warm pudding that manages to be both light and creamy. Cannellini beans are only slightly less basic, and here they appear as a pancetta-accented purée ($12) that's more like a thick soup.

Pasta? Acquerello has it, of course, though in subtly intensified forms, such as tagliolini ($17) – ribbonlike, fresh strands – tossed with a saffron sauce, chunks of seared ahi, and (the kicker) bits of bottarga, a Sardinian dried tuna with a briny saltiness like that of anchovy. Or ravioli stuffed with lobster and fried to become panzerotti ($18) – a dish of Naples and nearby Calabria – served in a peppery broth.

Fish dishes are a little more noticeably involved, from a filet of grilled salmon ($31), perched atop a salad of mâche and pickled shallot and surrounded by a sauce of mixed wild mushrooms (with plenty of morels), to branzino ($30), a type of sea bass, whose crisp-seared pieces are arranged upright, like a teepee, over a jumble of olives, artichokes, potatoes, and arugula bathed in a red wine-pancetta vinaigrette.

But what is most special about Acquerello is the service. Certainly there are many high-end places with more – with armies of – servers and bussers to replace your fork with practically every bite. But I have never been in a restaurant where the service was more informed. It was plain our server was familiar with every dish on the menu, and every question we asked brought an answer that not only reflected an intimate understanding of the food but of what we wanted to know about it. It was, in the most pleasant way, an educational experience, and as we know, even the best educations have their lacunae.

Woodward's Garden. 1700 Mission (at Duboce), S.F. (415) 621-7122. Tues.-Thurs., 6-8:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 6-9 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Noisy. Wheelchair accessible. Acquerello. 1722 Sacramento (at Polk), S.F. (415) 567-5432. Dinner: Tues.-Sat., 5:30-10:30 p.m. Beer and wine. American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.