Like the Melrose Avenue branch, the new [Antonio]'s prominently features strolling serenaders, which may not be welcome to everybody. On the other hand, for some tastes the new Antonio's will be even handsomer than the old one. It has taken over the building that once housed an Italian restaurant that insisted that an exclamation mark was part of its name (Boh!), and it resembles a miniature villa with tall mirrors and the usual restaurant-quality paintings on its yellow walls, the centerpiece being a skylight hung with plants.

Sort of good news. I have always wanted to believe in Antonio's. The economics of running a restaurant favor dishes that can be cooked as short orders, so it's virtually a public service when a restaurant goes beyond the obvious. In the case of Mexican food, this means, for instance, serving any stew beyond the occasional mole or birria, or on Saturday mornings that reputed hangover cure menudo. Antonio's has a revolving menu of repeated nightly specials that take us far beyond the usual.

So I've been grateful, and I've wanted very hard to believe, but something about Antonio's never quite lived up to the promise of this plan. So it doesn't serve menudo-well, I guess I can forgive a restaurant for not serving tripe. But when Antonio's makes birria, it's with veal instead of kid. Briefly, there's something about Antonio's that shrinks from vividness. I'm not just talking about pepperiness (though that's often in short supply, except for the short-tempered table salsa that will be hot enough for most people). Something is vague, fuzzy and downright tired about a distressing proportion of Antonio's dishes.