A light and elegant Burrata Caprese salad ($10.00), with grape tomatoes, basil and olio novella di Sicilia, and a plate of crispy zucchini flowers filled with ricotta, are elegantly plated. But a hastily put-together crispy shrimp and calamari ($10.00) was the only disappointing starter. Other starters include a beef carpaccio with white truffle puree, a dry cured pork salame with black peppercorns ($7.00) and a seared yellow fin tuna with rosemary and shallot butter beans.

Mains are for the most part winners, and modestly priced, too. It's hard to imagine a better roasted organic chicken ($19.00) than D'Amico's – crispy, juicy and served with a tangy sauteed spinach. And I can't remember enjoying a piece of steak ($36.00) as much either. This grilled 20 ounce porterhouse steak, normally tender but dull, was full of flavor served with a simple heap of roasted potatoes. The grilled veal chop ($36.00) is good: just a decent cut of meat, seared hard till it gets a nice crust, paired with fagiolini.

The rest of Gemma's food - pizza and pastas - ran the gamut from workmanlike and pedestrian to lackluster and disappointing. The Quattro Stagione ($14.00), which I tried a few times, is with the scantest four seasons flavor hidden within overwhelmingly basil, with a few artichokes, prosciutto and mushrooms quickly tossed in. The Prosciutto di Parma e Arugala ($13.00) is inadequate in several ways; mostly though, the ham itself is strangely flavorless, so wan and lifeless that it could be anything—pork, chicken, tofu, clothing, who knows. As if to compensate for this, the kitchen swamps the pizza with piercingly salty parmesan with the eponymous baby arugala.

Service at Gemma has been, in my experience, highly unpredictable. While service at an introductory visit was efficient and courteous, a subsequent visit was maddening. At the last visit, we hardly saw our main server after we placed our orders; instead we were subject to a frenzy of disorganized servers' assistants trying to do things like place entrees on top of still-being-worked-on appetizer plates, and snatching away plates from which people were still eating.