Bye Bye, Pisces.

Le Zoccole, 95 Ave. A (6th St.), 212-260-6660.

Recently someone asked me how long a decent, successful restaurant survives, on average, in Manhattan. I thought of Pisces and answered, "About seven years." That medium-scale seafood restaurant opened in the mid-90s and quickly became the place for young East Villagers to bring their visiting parents. The food was unpretentious and fresh. The room was pleasantly wide open to one of the neighborhood's busiest corners. By 1999 it was a local staple. Now it's gone.

Who knows why? Things just turn over here, and they don't always check to see if you merit a pass before they turn on you. One has to figure the owners of Chelsea's Le Zie had this cruel arithmetic in mind when they spun off Le Zoccole. Zie has long been one of the best Italian restaurants for its price class in the whole city. It's not tremendously well-known, but it does well. Lots of bridge-and-tunnel regulars.

The clientele is just one of the factors causing Zie to appear a little more out of step with its stylish Chelsea surroundings every year. A few years ago, Italian-food connoisseurs made a big fuss over the Park Slope opening of Al Di La, an inferior restaurant specializing, like Zie, in Venetian cuisine. It didn't matter that there was a better Venetian restaurant, simply because the new place was hot.

Turn, turn, turn. Zoccole is pretty much Zie translated into East Village 2003. The hot new restaurant occupies Pisces' old spot on Ave. A, at 6th St., across from Sidewalk. They 86ed the fish tanks, but otherwise changed the room hardly at all. You can still choose a streetside table and end up rubbing elbows with some panhandling squatter kid. The new menu is a replica of Zie's. Someone here understands about how the more things change, etc. When your best dishes include spaghetti and meatballs, the ebb and flow of fashion must be like the tide is to a fisherman.

Look for those retro-chic spaghetti and meatballs to catch on in the E.V.?eventually. So far, the most popular Zoccole dishes seem to be the chicchetti platter and the whole-fish specials.

The former is a starter sampler of Venetian bar snacks ($15.95), all served in their own little dishes, which makes for easy sharing. Included are deep-fried artichoke hearts and olives, anchovies in vinegar, eggplant stewed in oil and sun-dried tomato, cold octopus salad, prosciutto in a basket of parmesan, sardines in saor (golden raisins, pine nuts, sweet onions, garlic, vinegar and white wine), squares of polenta, a dollop of cod mousse and a perfect introduction to those full-flavored little Venetian meatballs. The fried bits didn't quite come off, but everything else was assertively tasty, and naturally so.

The chicchetti are worthy of their popularity. It's a lot of fine food for the money, and we Americans love our variety. It's also worth noting that Zoccole has the casually refined air of an actual Italian snacking place. (The restaurant-class designation "osteria" is part of Zoccole's name, but local marketing tradition has recently rendered that word as meaningless stateside as "cafe," "tavern" and "grill.") There's a sense, with the platter, of being showered with robust fruits of the sea in their ideal, barely adorned form.

Though it pays to heed the meatball chicchetto. Of course Venice is a coastal city, but you don't want to approach it as you would Rome or Naples. It's up north, where the food is meatier. I tried to move my table in that direction by ordering the beef carpaccio ($9.95). It tasted so clean the raw juice was like spring water. The dish comes with shaved parmesan and arugula, which operate together to round the thin slices into a crisp, tender and sharp whole.

We also tried a special appetizer of arancini ($6.95). These "little oranges" are actually spheres of cheese and rice, fried golden brown. In Sicily they have ham inside too, and they're the size of softballs. Zoccole's northern version were more like golf balls, oddly meatless though pleasantly crispy. The rice inside was a hearty, yellow risotto grain.

The restaurant, like its parent, offers a flabbergasting number of delicious-sounding specials every night. For instance, if the shrimp cakes, probably the most beloved appetizer at Le Zie, are on the sandwich board, I can't advise passing them up. Menu entrees of linguini with clams ($11.95), macaroni and cheese with summer black truffles ($13.95) and spaghetti with meatballs ($10.95) are all good enough that, as a regular, one almost feels as if one doesn't even want to know about the specials. Sometimes these pastas must compete with a Zoccole special of spaghettini with bottarga ($13.95).

Bottarga is shaved fish roe, and it's something a lot of restaurants make a mess of. Zoccole uses tuna bottarga. The spaghettini is tossed with garlic and broccoli rabe. All you see of the roe are tiny flecks of orange. It works like a base note, woven into the lively texture of the noodle, amplifying the bitter green and luxuriant garlic.

The bottarga pasta makes for a more memorable seafood experience than a special of whole branzino, though any of Zoccole's whole fish are likely to satisfy. The flaky Mediterranean bass comes drizzled with luscious olive oil for $21.95. Zoccole's servers always offer a tableside de-boning.

Among the notable second plates is Venetian-style calf's liver with onions and polenta ($11.95), and veal piccata with sauteed spinach ($15.95). Don't hesitate to go for the piccata if you enjoyed veal back when every New York Italian restaurant made it. Zoccole's veal is exquisitely butchered, and pounded flat and quickly out of the pan?the medallions are tenderized even more by the lemon, which also activates the greens in a subtle manner.

Zoccole's wine list is solid if undistinguished. Velvety, tannic Valpolicella is good if you're going the northern meat-and-cheese route; it's available by the glass or bottle. So is an equally reliable, softer alternative: Chianti Remole. To complement whole fish I recommend the dry Campagnian white Falanghina, which goes for a standard $30 per bottle (they're out of it now, but hope to obtain more soon). To make your Zoccole meal an occasion, try a round or two of Prosecco Rustico. As many with-it New Yorkers discovered this summer, that stuff delivers all the delight of a delicious sparkling wine at half the price.