There’s a game that academically oriented musicians used to play — or still play, I’m not sure, I’ve lost some connections to that circle — which involved the admission of embarrassing shortcomings in the field. It went like this: A group of audiophiles, gathered in a room on some boring night of the week, will take turns naming painfully overplayed musical works. If you, even in your extensive training and hours in the listening room of the school library, have never heard the piece, you have to acknowledge that fact. The pieces are easy at first — Pachabel’s Canon, Beethoven’s Ninth, the Magic Flute — but then get increasingly obscure. Sooner or later, you admit that you don’t know how it goes, and you pay the price by doing a shot, or streaking the band room, or going to bed after playing an unresolved full cadence, or whatever you do to torture one another in music school.

In that spirit of admission, I never went to Michaela’s before it emptied out last year and then became Shays a few months ago. I had not eaten there, nor peeked inside, despite it being a local favorite and right in the middle of the city. I’m a bit ashamed — and there are a few more places like that around here. So, this piece will not compare décor, or cooking style, or service, or anything to the old place. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t see why new restaurants should have the ghosts of their predecessors hanging over them, even if I came to that opinion strictly through my own lack of research and development. So there.

While Shays is new to the Monument Square area, owners Joe and Shea McGonigal have a bit more experience with the Portland food scene than that. They are also owners of the Crooked Mile, the little footprint of a café/sandwich shop on Milk Street. The sandwiches served there were originally recommended to me by a cook at Fore Street; they are indeed tasty and cost-effective, and their coffee is pretty darn good to boot. So if you head to the Crooked Mile for an early lunch and then over to Shays for a early dinner, you’ll see a couple of overlapping items on the menu’s Sandwich Board: the Curried Chicken Wrap and the Chicken Caesar Wrap to name a couple. That’s not a strike by any means; any smart owner/chef of two adjunct restaurants within a stone’s throw of each other will knock two items off two prep lists with one whisk.

A note about the service: Any restaurant whose waitress — even if it’s just one — will offer to take your sleeping baby off your arm for a few minutes while you wolf down lunch deserves a medal. Little Emaline — not three weeks old — got to observe close-up the fine art of pulling a pint and serving appetizers and, I must say, had a grand old time (pay attention, Em, because that’s going to be your summer job in 15 years). And it wasn’t just that; for a young couple carrying in a baby (a ticking time bomb for many restaurant servers), we were treated like gold all the way around.

As far as the menu goes, what you see is what you get. Everything we ordered was consistent, well seasoned, and the prices were consciously low for a restaurant in such a bustling area — the only thing even touching $16 was the ribeye, everything else is significantly below that. The House Caesar was simple; chopped Romaine, sprinkling of parm, croutons, creamy Caesar dressing. Nothing to write home about, but very much the standard of what a bar-and-grill Caesar is in this city. The Pear Quesadilla was much more interesting. If Hugo’s and 555 have made names for themselves in Portland by taking indomitable technique and applying down-homey names to their dishes, this is an example of hitting that trend with the other side of the bat. Carmelized pears, onions, walnuts, honey, and bleu cheese (pears, walnuts, and bleu cheese is one of the classic combinations in traditional fine dining) are sandwiched in a flour tortilla, grilled, and served with a side of creamy bleu cheese dipping sauce.

Classy trashy, baby, and it tasted pretty good, too.

"It’s like a whole cheese plate," they told me, "All wrapped up!" Is there another way to enjoy a cheese plate other than wrapped in a tortilla? Not anymore!

From the Sandwich Board I got the Western Chicken, a predictable but decent chicken breast topped with bacon, onions, cheddar, and BBQ sauce, and served with crispy little onion strings, which were the best part of the plate. Wife Jackie received a surprisingly charming Chicken Scaloppini with angel hair pasta, the pounded and breaded breasts fried and topped with mushrooms, lemon, artichoke hearts, capers, and diced bacon. It was a nice, medium-sized portion as well, which makes it a great solo lunch for those with time for only one course.

The desserts were mostly homemade (the brownie in the sundae, the pear cobbler, and the strawberry trifle) with a couple of imports (rustic apple tart, cheesecake), and both the sundae and trifle were just fine. I halted and started to order the pear cobbler when our served noted that her brother had made it, but she told me to get it next time because she was pretty sure we’d be coming back to the coffee-colored walls and red booths sometime soon. A bold statement, but if babysitting is still included in the tip, than jot us down for next week, too.

Andy King can be reached at dinnerwithandy@yahoo.com