If you take a picture of Wharf Street’s Cinque Terre from just the right angle, you get perhaps the most authentic Italian experience the restaurant offers. A restaurant tucked away down a cobblestone alley (well, Wharf Street), accessible only by a short walk, with a small, unassuming awning over the door. Step through that door, and you can still play the illusion. The space is bigger than you expected, with a lofty second floor suspended around the perimeter of the dining area beneath. Even to the point of looking at the menu, with its multiple courses and emphasis on simplicity, you’re playing tourist, and making a nice little game of it.

Then you notice the prices, and start to get a little edgy. They’re selling simplicity for above market value, it seems, and you begin to wonder if it is the kind of simplicity that means "we realize the difficulty of preparing food to bring out its natural flavors," or if it’s the much more sinister "simplicity sells."

After all, there are a few notable restaurants in this town that sell the idea of taking local ingredients and using the most basic of cooking methods, as time consuming as they are, to feature the ingredient itself. In those cases, you don’t mind paying a hefty price; a great restaurant will make you almost unaware of the check’s final damage. And recently, restaurants have opened which use the concept of preparing food in a straightforward manner to keep the customer’s, not to mention the owner’s, food costs down. In those cases, you fall in love with the place.

In the case of Cinque Terre, I left neither in love with the cuisine nor happy with the amount that they charged for it. This did not seem like the place I had heard so much about for the past two years. People raved about authentic northern Italian food, top-notch service, silky hand-made pasta, local ingredients, and an award-winning wine list. However, what I experienced last week, when I visited to see what they could do with their gleaming new kitchen, fell well short of the excellence that Portland diners have become accustomed to raving about over the past couple of years.

There were standout points during the meal, but many of them were stopped cold by glaring errors of both technique and composition. The Bolognese, for example, was delicious, with a beautiful brunoise of carrot flecked through the ground meat, but the Rigatoni was so undercooked that it almost cracked when I punctured it with my fork.

The Quaglie, grilled Cavendish Farms quail, was tender, and its accompanying parmigiana polenta was nice, but the porcini sauce that was spread on the plate was cold. Not cooling down, but flat out cold.

Smoky grilled shrimp highlighted the seafood in the Cacciuccio, but the tomato brodo (usually a broth, but this was more of a tomato sauce) was flavored with what must have been, strangely, saffron. Saffron has too strong a flavor not to be mentioned on the menu. Case in point: I hate saffron. I wouldn’t have ordered it had I known.

The salads, all three of them made with local greens, were straightforward. The Pomodoro was presented as a sliced tomato, stacked back into its original shape with basil leaves peeking out of the layers. The Mista and the Lattuga were each just greens lightly dressed, respectively, with white balsamic and Gorgonzola Picante dressings, tasty but underwhelming. The Gorgonzola Picante/greens combination is also used in the Orcchietti pasta plate; make sure not to get both. They’re pretty much the same dish.

It’s ironic that two of the most successful attempts were two of the more complex items on the menu. The Calamari plate in the Pesce course featured a well-balanced anchovy broth surrounding chickpeas, tomatoes, capers, and quickly seared squid. The veal meatballs and porcini oil topping off the poured-at-the-table beef brodo was sprinkled with grated parmigiano, adding a nice saltiness to the rich broth. Also a highlight was the Grilled Salmon, paired with a simple olive tapenade and arugula salad. Save your money, however, on the Vitello Milanese. The thin scaloppine was breaded and fried so that the meat’s flavor was totally obliterated, and only offered a fried foil to the handful of arugula salad placed on top.

Rounding out the night were two desserts and a glass of limoncello. The dessert selection, while containing a number of standby Italian treats like biscotti, gelato, and tiramisu, also featured, inexplicably, such items as mint chocolate crème brûlée and a chocolate tart topped with vanilla gelato. Considering the tradition of Italian sweets that the Northeast fosters, I was shocked that an authentic Italian restaurant had items of such banality.

As for service, our servers did their best to provide team-style table management, and had details like folding napkins for restroom-bound patrons down pat (unfortunately at the cost of miscommunicating bread requests, second cups of coffee, and a spoon for the soup). The wine list was worth a browse, dividing the Italian-only selections by geographical location, but is hardly a reason to spend as much as you will if visiting Cinque Terre for an evening of Italian simplicity. Contrary to their goal and your initial feelings, upon leaving you’ll be very aware that you’re planted squarely in the Old Port.

Andy King can be reached at dinnerwithandy@yahoo.com