By Paul Reidinger

IN THE MID -1990s, Reed Hearon was the Johnny Appleseed of restaurants: Wherever he wandered in the city, a notable place seemed to pop up. The list was impressive: It began with LuLu, in SoMa, and went on to include Black Cat and Rose Pistola, in North Beach, and Café Marimba and Rose's Café, in the Marina. At some point a few years ago, despite talk of a Franco-Italian venture along the Embarcadero near Ferry Plaza, Hearon quietly vanished – but the empire he built continues mainly to thrive.

If the still-splendid LuLu remains the jewel in the crown of the onetime Hearon restaurants, Rose Pistola is only slightly less glittering. It was the first of Hearon's restaurants to emphasize a regional cuisine – that of Liguria, the northwest Italian province whose capital is Genoa – and nearly a decade after its launch that slant is still apparent. (LuLu, by contrast, opened with a Franco-Cal-Ital menu, while Black Cat offered, in the beginning, a synthesis of elements, including those of old North Beach, Chinatown, and the sea: early signs of multiple-personality disorder.)

If Ligurian cooking isn't absolutely the Mediterranean ideal, it has to be close: Among its principal ingredients are olive oil, lemons, and seafood. A lovely little tutorial in the potency of this simple trio is a plate of the house-cured fish ($12); the dish might include thin slices of Pacific swordfish and king salmon and whole sardine filets, austerely plated in a pool of olive oil and lemon juice and scattered with capers and bits of celery. A similar, and only slightly more elaborate, presentation is grilled octopus ($11), presented on a gravel-pit salad of chickpeas scented with fennel bulb, greened with arugula leaves, and made tangy by plenty of lemon juice. The general effect is so summery that it becomes hard to imagine rainy weather or winter's cold and dark ever coming to a land nourished by such food.

Many of the bigger dinnertime plates reflect the same sunshiny influences: Hawaiian escolar ($24), say, grilled and seated atop a jumbled topography of cannellini beans, fennel bulb, and dandelion greens, with of course a good dousing of lemon juice. The kitchen borrows a page from Hayes Street Grill by offering diners a choice of among a half-dozen or so varieties of fish and a half-dozen or so ways of having them prepared, from braising to roasting to grilling. Escolar is one of those fabulously meaty, white-fleshed fish from the deep waters around the Hawaiian Islands, and when I asked to have it grilled, the server nodded his head in vigorous approval.

But there are plenty of nonmaritime possibilities too, from fat-tender gnocchi ($14) stuffed with porcini and rosemary, to a formidable crock of penne ($13) tossed with Bolognese sauce and baked under a cap of grated pecorino Toscano cheese. Other than seafood, though, the big stars at Rose Pistola are the flat breads and their near-relations: the pizzas, the focaccias, the stuffed focaccias, even the chickpea-flour torte called farinata. The big hint is the wood-burning oven that glows and flickers just past the host's station; if you're the observant sort, you can ask to be seated at the counter, which affords an intimate view of bakers wielding their peels. But even those seated at faraway tables can keep an eye on the action, since the restaurant is encircled by a mirror: a beltway for wandering eyes.

Here I confess to a fascination with farinata, a torte made from chickpea flour, water, olive oil, salt, and maybe some herbs. A farinata is pretty easy to make at home (see Without Reservations, 7/6/05), and I often serve mine as an appetizer, with just a sprinkling of cheese. Rose Pistola's version ($8) is more ambitious, with a nicely squared edge indicative of a proper pan rather than a skillet, and it acquires a certain pissaladière-ish cast from caramelized onion, whose sweetness is balanced by olives and sage. (No blue cheese, though.)

While the complimentary focaccia can show signs of rigor mortis despite tomato and cheese toppings, the made-to-order versions, stuffed with crescenza cheese and a choice of supplementary fillings including prosciutto, porcini mushrooms, and truffle oil ($13-$14), are hot-from-the-oven fresh. And the pizzas are, as they have been from the beginning, sublime, from thin, crisp crusts that would impress even jaded New Yorkers or Chicagoans, to simple, powerfully effective toppings such as rock shrimp and arugula ($15), a peppery-sweet pairing buffered by a confidently seasoned, garlicky tomato sauce.

We were underwhelmed by one dish: quail cooked al mattone ("under a brick," $10) and served with mustard fruits. The latter had the texture and inoffensive sweetness of candied peaches, but the tiny bird itself (presented whole) was tough and a little dry. This came as a surprise, since chicken roasted under a brick is an Italian classic and the brick provides a method of quickly and evenly distributing heat that, in my experience, reliably produces crisp skin with juicy meat.

Rose Pistola has aged well. Testimony to this point must include the heavy weekend crowds, which perhaps aren't quite as thick as they were at the restaurant's opening, nearly a decade ago, when Hearon's star rode high, but thick enough nonetheless to create a pleasant sense of stir. (The mood is more relaxed at lunch.) The service is superior and the look timeless, from the intricately tiled floors to the gleaming wood trim to the fire that roars day and night in all weather, casting its rosy glow on all the passing faces.

Rose Pistola. 532 Columbus (at Union), SF. (415) 399-0499. Lunch: daily, 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Dinner: Sun.-Thurs., 5:30-10:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5:30-11 p.m. Full bar. American Express, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Can be noisy. Wheelchair accessible.