Il Gusto might seem like one of the least promising restaurants on the College strip. Smacked on the corner attached to a nondescript block, it is basically an informal Italian restaurant disguised as a French Bistro. With Neo-Palladian windows, raw wooden tables and a minimal bistro décor, luckily, it’s on a bright corner.

Like Café Margaux before it, it is still a small space, just 50 seats inside and an extra 50 more on the patio. However, there’s something so personal and passionate about this effort, you really can’t help but be charmed.

The strange but fragrant dishes everybody seems to adore bear little resemblance to the food listed in the menu. Il Gusto’s food tends to be elegant, almost ladylike, with all the sort of seasonality you might expect from a rural joint located a few hundred yards from the best market in Southern Italy, and careful, restrained presentations.

The 6oz Cajon flatiron steak on a bed of mixed greens immediately caught my eye, and indeed was a healthy-sized started, grilled to a perfect medium rare and spiced too. Conned by the sound of the bacon-wrapped jalapenos ($6.95) and an order of glistening calamari Fritti, it was a little homespun and evidently, just not enjoyable. Other courses proved to be more interesting and unexpected with dishes such as the cultured mussels in a tomato broth ($7.95) and a baby spinach salad with roasted pine nuts ($7.90) were quite adequate.

For the mains, the process was a slow one, which is fine with something like the veal scaloppine ($15.95), but is less successful with a butter-baked salmon ($15.95) as it leaves the fillet soft and rubbery. A good bet is the marinated rosemary lamb chops and the scaloppine served with herbed mushrooms and green onions, does a bit more justice.