★★★ Trinity Restaurant
243 Zion St., Hartford, (860) 728-9822

Restaurants are a lot like people. It’s usually the most showy, ostentatious individuals that one finds the most annoying and tires of quickly. And it’s the unassuming ones — with subtle sophistication, quiet focus and warmth — that are the most interesting in the long haul. Trinity Restaurant is one of the quiet and classy kind. Don’t look for blaring neon on this Zion Street eatery. In fact, you may not even notice the place, with its retro-looking Sprite sign about the size of a pizza box, affixed to the front. Trinity Restaurant is on the site of the beloved Timothy’s, and like the former establishment, Trinity already appears to be a staple for students and staff at the college.

The interior is simple, with shining hard wood floors, a hint of subdued color hear and there and pleasing abstract paintings on the walls. This cool surface was disrupted slightly by the sound of Alvin and the Chipmunks singing Christmas songs in their dog-whistle voices. The holiday spirit, you can’t escape it. But once Lisa and I looked at the wide-ranging but not over-long menu our excitement returned. For lunch, Trinity Restaurant serves intriguing sandwiches, like a grilled tuna with tamari and ginger sauce, or a seared salmon filet with chipotle sauce. There are specialty pizzas, too. For dinner they serve a homemade Bolognese with rigatoni, paella with chorizo, osso buco with goat cheese polenta and more. They’re still waiting for a beer and wine license, though; so unfortunately there won’t be any Sangiovese with that braised lamb.

We enjoyed a Greek salad, served with excellent salty cubes of feta cheese. A fish cake made with salt cod and served with tender baby bok choy and a ginger sauce was an interesting blend of Caribbean and Asian ingredients. The fritter was light and fluffy, but with spikes of flavor from the fish. An order of butternut squash ravioli had an almost fruity flavor, but the sweetness was kept in balance by sage butter and the bright edge of lemon. This was good, but I would have enjoyed it more had the ravioli been a little thinner and without quite so much butter. Another winner was the roasted lamb sandwich, served with red onion, cucumbers and a yogurt salsa spread — again an unlikely combination, but one that seemed to take elements of cheese steak and the gyro and elevate them to a higher plane.

A cannoli dessert was delicious, with the filling freshly piped into the pastry shells, dusted with powered sugar.

A later visit revealed that the pizzas aren’t the restaurant’s strength. My pie was a little soggy and oily.

There’s a small disclaimer inside the Trinity Restaurant clarifying that it is not affiliated with the college, though the school’s gothic spires can be glimpsed from the dining room. There may be sound legal reason’s for this, but I’d think Trinity College would be thrilled to have this smart little energetic eatery associated with it. Like the school, it engages nicely with the neighborhood.

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