A; Q'ori

It'd be great to live in a city where things like A happened all the time. Some very nice, worldly people show up and start cooking wonderful food like it's no big thing. They pay zero attention to the restaurant scene, setting up shop in a diverse residential neighborhood that's a little rough around the edges. They offer a very limited menu in a tiny room, with prices low. Then they serve their customers better than many of the priciest restaurants in town do.

The word on A is that it's French-Caribbean-organic, but I offer the above as a better summary of what you need to know about the restaurant. I know a lot of food lovers, when reading reviews, like to skip to the descriptions of the dishes. But my advice to foodies is to go blind to A, because the place serves up surprises, and they are such happy surprises that fewer expectations will yield greater fun.

It started happening for me with the grilled avocado appetizer. Avocados being one of the foods that tastes explosively better when produced organically, not much needed to be done to A's. Grilling was more than enough. Flame-heat sweetened the pot without altering the raw fruit's perfect ripe creaminess. Each sliced half was also drizzled with a vaguely nutty shiitake-sesame vinaigrette. It probably wasn't French-Caribbean, but it sure as hell worked.

A baked d'anjou pear in clover honey and balsamic also brought dimension to a pure, elemental flavor. And, split like it was, the pear appetizer even looked like the avocado. It inspired wondering about exactly how many oblong orbs A's chef could do up in a row. There are only two more starters on the menu.

One of them is moules fume in cilantro-chili butter. It's just a few mussels, nicely smoked, then deshelled and bathed in the red-brown sauce. Does anyone else in New York served smoked mussels? I associate them with tins brought on camping trips. A's are a fresh rendering of the same idea, plump and tasting of campfire. What smoked mussel liquor does to a butter sauce with hot peppers and cilantro I cannot describe. Again: maybe not traditional, definitely good.

A couple years ago, this address housed a barbershop. Even more recently, A launched an equally miniscule bar, next door, called Cafe Del Bar. That's where you get your drinks when you eat at A, because the restaurant doesn't serve any (you can also bring your own). Our party ended up polishing off two bottles of Falling Star Chardonnay, which goes for $10 apiece. The wine is from Argentina, not organic and has that indeterminate sort-of-dryness of a blended house white. More popular with A's young clientele were Del Bar's three-dollar Red Stripes.

The vegetarian entree was stewed peas cassoulet with coconut curry "in a rustic bread bowl." In other words, the thick bean mush was pretty much dumped over a crusty loaf. This worked too. The cassoulet was somewhere between Middle Eastern pureed fava dip and Vietnamese shrimp broth (some bits of textured soy in there had uncanny shellfish consistency), only it was more of a stew, and it merged seamlessly with soggy bread. Our vegetarian was pleased.

Broiled chicken breast in pureed potatoes was a lot spicier than anticipated. It had the smoldering heat of a Louisiana sausage, which is probably what every juicy chicken breast wants to be deep down inside. We just happened to get the lucky one. It came with pan-seared sweet yams.

A's duck confit is marinated in a blend of mango juice and spices that had the drumstick tasting almost like it'd been jerked. Like all duck legs, this one offered too few bites of rich meat. Unlike most, it's inspiring large-scale memories. I'm afraid I won't taste anything like that West Indian confit for a long time. It came with pan-fried new potatoes, which seemed too plain by comparison, as did the chicken's side of yams.

Our party was served by A's managing partner, a French-speaking African, who was handling all of the restaurant's tables (the place seats 24). He did a great job, from his introductory warning about small portions?which wouldn't have been necessary below 96th St.?to his informative description of the restaurant's house-blended coffee. One of my companions had on an earlier visit met one of A's owners, a Brit who lived in France and has roots in Jamaica.

We tried both desserts. The creme brulee was a little overdone, veering slightly into scrambled-eggs territory. The sweet flavor satisfied, but that's not good enough with creme brulee. An apple tart was much better, so crisp and buttery that applely warmth shimmered down the spine with every swallow.

The appetizers at A are $6-$8, all the entrees are $10 and both desserts are $6. There was no wait for a table on the night I visited, but that will change. Places like A don't happen in New York very often at all.

A, 947 Columbus Ave. (betw. 106th & 107th Sts.), 531-1643. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Q'ori

Don't bother with the tapas at Q'ori, a new addition to Park Slope's ever-improving restaurant row. They're so much an afterthought that our host and waiter both neglected to give us a copy of the separate tapas menu. We should have taken that as a hint.

Sauteed mushrooms were served ice cold. An octopus ceviche was only a little less tasteless. Marinated Swiss cheese was apparently a pile of deli-bought cubes doused with olive oil. The chicken-liver pate made me pine for Zabar's. And most inexcusably, the tortilla española came off like yesterday's potato omelet. I've long suspected that every tapas restaurant can be accurately judged by the quality of its tortilla española?a dish taken so seriously in Spain that being served a slice as stale as what I got at Q'ori would probably be grounds for a lawsuit or duel.

Our dashed hopes for quality Brooklyn tapas precluded proper entree-sampling at Q'ori, and if you find yourself there I'd recommend trying your luck with that part of the menu. Because most of the appetizers were nothing to write home about either.

Things started off quite well though. The dining room is appealing?spacious, woody and dim, with private semicircular booths perfect for dish-sharing. The non-tapas menu suggests New Spanish, with all kinds of random exceptions. Servers are solicitous. The house bread is a light herb focaccia, served with that rarity among hummuses: one with enough garlic. So having to ask for the tapas menu didn't bother us.

Tapas are $3-$5, starters in the $6-$8 neighborhood and entrees range from $12 to the 20s. The wine list sufficed despite the importers' strike, probably because the owner also runs a bar (Loki, nearby on the same strip). Before I knew this, I thought it suggested there might be more culinary flair behind the restaurant than was in evidence when I visited. It was a Sunday night and the place was very nearly empty. Q'ori serves even on Monday nights, when most of the rest of the strip is closed.

A special appetizer of homemade sausage was quite good. Mellow white beans and tomatoes accompanied the robust meat. It was the only dish specially advertised as made-in-house, and the only one we tasted that didn't lie flat in the mouth.

A salt-cod crabcake with corn relish and smoked tomato aioli went over pretty well, as did a whole roasted quail ("about the size of your fist," our waiter accurately predicted) with sausage stuffing and sauerkraut, though it was difficult to access the tiny bird's tender meat.

Cavatelli with smoked chicken, spinach pesto and goat cheese is, like the crabcake, also available as an entree. The pesto was goopy and bland, the chicken's smokiness cloying and the goat cheese rang of pointless affectation. My theory: this is the kind of thing that follows from serving tapas without really caring about tapas.

Q'ori also has a raw bar. The only reasonable explanation is that the owner always wanted a restaurant with a raw bar. It's hard to see where clams on the halfshell could fit in among the menu's labored and heavy highlights. Yet harder to imagine is any thinking Brooklynite ordering oysters here when mighty Blue Ribbon is just a few blocks away.

Pumpkin and mussel soup found Q'ori getting by on an unusual combination. Our lone entree, mushroom risotto with roasted red peppers and grilled zucchini, didn't elicit any complaints either. A little perkier were a pair of side dishes. "Creamed spinach" was actually fresh, crispy spinach leaves over which cream had been poured, and pencil fries sprinkled with parmesan did not survive at center table for long.

The lame tapas make me wish I could give Q'ori a definitive drubbing, but it must be stressed that some of the food was promising and the place is only a few months old. Among the many entrees not sampled were honey and coriander roast chicken, seared scallops, braised lamb, bass with curry goat ragout, aged steak frites and a pork loin special, topped with shellfish. For dessert there's flan, as well as lemon-curd tarts with strawberry sauce. The candlelit bar up front is almost as snazzy as the curtained-off dining room. It'd be a good place to meet a friend for a drink. If you need a snack, ask for the sausage.

Q'ori, 206 5th Ave. (Union St.), Brooklyn, 718-622-7300.