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You will find a market inside the entrance of Marconi Mercato, and on a quick visit, you might mistake this cafe-esque part for the whole. The space continues, though, first into a bar area with several dining tables and then into the dining room proper. A staircase in the latter leads down to the “super-secret� (said a bartender) speakeasy, which opens only occasionally.

Spacious on its own terms, Marconi Mercato also expands the footprint of restaurateur Joe Smugala and chef Carlos Hernandez. The duo also run Collina Eatery (previously known as Pit Stop) on the Hill and El Milagro Azteca and GastroPit in the adjacent Southwest Garden neighborhood. Smugala also co-owns the Hill restaurant Carnivore.

For Marconi Mercato, Smugala and Hernandez have partnered with Brian McBride. The trio have taken an expansive view of Italian cuisine, both in the regional scope of the restaurant’s fare and in the menu’s format. The sheer number of dishes inevitably leads to some hiccups, but of Smugala and Hernandez’s restaurants, this is the most satisfying as well as the most ambitious.

I could have spent my review visits exploring only the selection of cicchetti — smaller bites such as the polpette fritte, springy little meatballs made from beef brisket and wild boar, served in a chunky sauce of Bianco di Napoli tomatoes with a snappy dollop of salsa verde. For crisp fried artichokes, Hernandez favors more subtle accompaniments: a spread of creamy, mild ricotta di bufala, a drizzle of barrel-aged balsamic vinegar.

Can Marconi Mercato resist the temptation to serve toasted ravioli? It cannot. Here, though, the crackling exterior of each large raviolo al’ aragosta yields to a molten, luscious lobster-flavored filling. On the side for dipping, instead of marinara sauce, is a bright, cooling basil aioli. If a restaurant must upgrade the classic t-rav, this is how to do it: swanky, but not showy.

When one of these cicchetti fell short, it stumbled over the kitchen’s ideas. A dish of Brussels sprouts with apple slices, shaved radicchio and candied peanuts couldn’t decide if it wanted to be an exceptional salad or a vegetable showcase. It needed a heavier dose of its Italian dressing to be the former, a more pronounced Brussels sprouts flavor to register as the latter.

Judicious editing would also benefit the Nduja é Salsiccia Piccante, from the menu’s pasta selection. A generous plate of rigatoni in cream sauce with Parmigiano-Reggiano tempered the heat of the dish’s spicy fennel sausage and completely obscured the promised ‘nduja. Credit to the rigatoni, its sauce and the bite of spinach, which carried this dish nonetheless.

As with the cicchetti, I could have dwelled only among Marconi Mercato’s pastas for this column. The restaurant features freshly made pasta — this part of the menu is titled Pasta Fresca, in fact — from pappardelle and the aforementioned rigatoni to gnocchi. These potato dumplings, both bigger and softer than the shelf-stable variety you grab at the store, swim in a briny, bright orange lobster- and shrimp-based sauce charged with chili oil. The gnocchi are so imposing in size and number that they render the split lobster tail accompanying them into parentheses on one side of the plate.

The Ravioli ai Funghi might be Marconi Mercato’s best dish of any kind here. Each plump ravioli quivers with its filling of earthy, gracefully sweet wild mushroom. Rosemary and sun-dried tomato balance the buttery richness, and the salty sheep’s milk tang of Pecorino Sardo finishes each bite.

Hernandez and his kitchen team have a way with mushrooms. Sauteed oyster mushrooms brightened by cherry tomatoes steal attention from a tender veal chop alla marsala, one of the specialties of the house. If the veal and its silky marsala sauce do eventually command your attention, the mushrooms make for a more appealing side dish than the bland mashed potatoes.

The menu divides its main courses between house specialties like this bone-in veal chop or chicken breast rolled around eggplant, prosciutto di Parma and provolone in a white wine sauce (served, in due recognition of the kitchen’s potato skills, with a fine stack of scalloped spuds) and the traditional Italian designation of secondi.

The latter group could have wandered into Marconi Mercato from an upscale steakhouse. Three of the four dishes are steaks: a New York strip and two rib eyes.

My eyes strayed to the pork Milanese instead. The bone-in chop stays juicy inside its light breading, which itself retains its crispness beneath blobs of melted fresh mozzarella. Scattered across the plate are small, exceptionally juicy tomato halves. Their sweetness rings against the thick chop as dramatically as St. Ambrose’s bells.