It has grown fashionable—and not merely for doomsayers in sandwich boards—to point out parallels between our own trying present and the waning glory days of ancient Rome. The strained military. The wobbly economy. The simmered white beans with fried anchovies and puntarelle. The Visigoths approach, and the capital is burning. But amid such telltale signs of the end of an empire, at least certain citizens are eating well.

The latest perk for the privileged is on Fillmore Street, in the small space that once showcased the small plates of Chez Nous. With SPQR, co-owners Shelley Lindgren, Nate Appleman, and Victoria Libin display their lingering fondness for naming restaurants after Italian civic markers (their other restaurant, A16, gets its name from a highway that cuts through Campagna). The initials of their new place stand for Senatus Populusque Romanus, or the Senate and the Roman People, a motto of the Eternal City that appears on manhole covers and Rome’s coat of arms. The restaurant is a Roman-inspired osteria. Along with serving as a Latin primer, it offers an earthy style of cooking that is pretty much impossible to dislike.

Compared to A16—a large, clamorous restaurant heated by a wood-fueled oven—SPQR draws its warmth from a more neighborhoody vibe. The dining room, no more than a few paces wide, presses up against a marble bar overseen by smart, amiable servers. Their intimacy with the menu and the wine list (the latter is superb, with a flexible option of three-ounce tastings and half carafes) mirrors the sweet snugness of the space itself. Every restaurant claims to care about its customers, but the cliché takes on substance at SPQR. It’s staffed, if not by foodies (apologies for the irritating term), then at least by food professionals, who, regardless of their true ambitions, approach their job like a career. The restaurant’s no-reservations policy is inconvenient, but turnover is relatively painless, and you’re guaranteed to be treated well whenever you show up.

As with good home-cooking, SPQR’s kitchen spins something interesting from the everyday. The formula is familiar: ingredients you’d find at the Ferry Building or Campo dei Fiori, brought together with minimalist touches. Appetizers, delivered “cold,” “hot,” and “fried,” speak to this elemental approach. Lightly marinated beets are simple crimson sunsets, shrouded with clouds of mild ricotta. Broccoli rabe is brightened by that timeworn trio: garlic, lemon, and dried chiles. Items range from dressed-down to stark naked. Local calamari, gently sautéed and mixed with white tondini beans, springs to textured life beneath breadcrumbs and capers. Fried chicken livers come piled on a plate with, well, nothing else.

To say the cuisine is not complex is not to suggest it lacks subtlety. Cooking this unfussy still requires a careful hand. SPQR walks, and sometimes crosses, the thin line between beautiful and boring. This trespass can even take place in the same dish on a different night. On my first visit, a white-bean appetizer was a masterwork of understatement: simmered perfectly, drizzled with olive oil and laced with puntarelle, then topped with a crumbling of deep-fried anchovies—the essence of unpretentious balance. But on another evening, those beans were overcooked and underseasoned, and the anchovies too scarce to merit mention. Same cast, but without the chemistry; a hit show that has lost its spark.

Such blips might be explained by sudden changes in the kitchen. Shortly after it opened, SPQR lost its co-executive chef, leaving Chef Appleman of A16 to shuttle between the two locations. Protégés have since been promoted to take charge of a menu that morphs constantly, but always includes housemade pastas, such as cornet-shaped trombette with nutty broccoli roman-esco and ricotta salata, and humble, homey spaghetti aglio e olio. These finely prepared dishes, so lightly topped with sauce that the taste of semolina often stands out most, are daring in the sense that their modesty is something of a double-edged sword. It’s refreshing to encounter a more nuanced version of the usual belly-bomb carbonara. But the strongest impression left by rigatoni with pecorino and black pepper is that it needs a few more cranks of the peppermill. The same could be said of several entrées. Beef brisket acquires a lush braised body from red wine and tomatoes; but breaded local sole, though fried to expert flakiness, swims close to the waters where delicate ends and dull begins.

For all its nods to the Old World, SPQR is perhaps most compelling when it embellishes more freely on Italian traditions. Desserts—like almond-milk granita with espresso crema, and chocolate panna cotta topped with a spoonful of smashed-up walnuts and sea salt—are never too sweet and consistently creative: California takes on Nonna’s repertoire. They’re nice punctuation marks with which to end an evening. If they also mark the end of an empire, then maybe it’s not so bad to fall.