South Portland has long provided necessary but unglamorous services for its tonier neighbors to the south and north. It’s our underappreciated repository for affordable housing, cheap auto parts, cheaper college credits, Target, and the mall. Now South Portland has the area’s most intriguing new dinner spot, and, I am willing to bet, America’s best restaurant within 20 yards of a community college.

For the last three years, One Fifty Ate, all the way down Broadway near SMCC, has been one of the area’s best spots for breakfast or lunch. Founders Allison Reid and Josh Potoki, along with new partner Guy Hernandez, bake maybe the best bread, and certainly the best bagels, in the area. They use that bread to frame an inventive array of sandwiches. While the food is transcendent, the feel of the place is decidedly down to earth. You order at the counter and squeeze in among the other locals. In the winter you hope for a spot near the gas fireplace, in the summer you can stretch out a little more on the deck.

A few months ago, One Fifty Ate began serving dinner three nights a week. I had heard they planned to go a little upscale at night — table service, wine list, etc. Everyone anticipated that the food was going to be good. The question was how One Fifty Ate could credibly transform itself from bakeshop/café to restaurant and not lose its identity.

Maybe it’s because home-makeover shows are so 18 months ago, but I had forgotten how much could be accomplished with some dark curtains, a few dried flowers, and candlelight. One Fifty Ate looks and feels great at night. The light in the dining room, which can seem a little dim in the daytime, suddenly feels pleasantly low. The close together tables feel more neighborhood-cozy than faux New York trendy.

This is also the case with One Fifty Ate’s relatively modest portions. Here small plates are not a post-tapas stab at chic. An appetizer is an appetizer and an entrée is an entrée, it’s just that the portions are scaled and priced to be civilized and to encourage you to try things. At One Fifty Ate’s community-college neighbor, classes are cheap and intriguing. For 68 bucks a credit you can study cryptography, or take a whole course on "Substance Abuse," which you used to just do informally on weekends. Across the road at One Fifty Ate, on the night we visited, you could try a chicken, porcini, and hazelnut patè for three dollars. That’s an education right there, and cheap at the price. Entrées go for $10 to $12. Fun.

But while CC classes tend to be hit or miss, the intriguing experiments that pop up on One Fifty Ate’s menu are hit or near-hit. The aforementioned patè, for example, seemed overwhelmed by the hazelnut and too sweet at first. I was reminded ever so slightly of flavored cream cheese. But it got better with each bite, especially as the taste of the mushrooms began to emerge, and the accompanying tart cherries and dark chicken meat added something really nice. Other dishes, like the halibut with braised celery root and slow cooked mustard greens, or the beet root and endive salad, were more unambiguously gratifying.

The bread is still wonderful. They bake it in a huge ring shape and hang it on a big hook right over the counter, where it waits to dazzle you with its sweetness and its perfect crust. As long as you don’t overdo it on the bread, the reasonable portions assure that, even if you have tried an appetizer and a salad, you won’t be too full to split a dessert. The baked pear with vanilla sauce was one of the best desserts I have had in many months. Every spoonful of pear, crust, and sauce seemed so precious that I flashed to childhood/primal fears that my sisters would hog any sweets in the house.

The transition from counter service to table service seems to have gone smoothly. Our waiter was pleasant, attentive and knowledgeable. The only notable bump was our experience with the wine, also somewhat community collegesque. Sometimes a class looks really good, but you can’t get into it, because you are signing up at the last minute since that’s how you do things, which is one of the reasons you are still in college in your late twenties, slacker. Similarly, One Fifty Ate’s short wine list consists of two reds and two whites, all $18, as well as a house wine that comes by the glass. But they were out of both bottles of red, and we had to settle for the house wine. It was a perfectly passable Italian, dry enough not to offend anyone.

The three owners are changing the menu every week, and you get the sense they are working out the creative energy that has accumulated over the years of channeling their deep talent into breakfast, soup, and sandwiches. They are still riffing off each other to try new combinations and reinvent classics. They are pulling chicken and putting it in dumplings with almonds; they are encouraging you to follow your shrimp and grits with poached leeks and crispy prosciutto; they are frying smelt and making their own ketchup. One of them has a charming affection for carrot salad. Thus far, they are not repeating themselves.

Soon, I think, One Fifty Ate will offer dinner on more nights, the wine list will grow, and some dishes will begin to emerge as favorites that you can expect to appear periodically among the new creations. In the meantime, one thing seems clear: Dinner at One Fifty Ate is sure to become a mainstay.

Brian Duff can be reached at bduff@une.edu