Bar Corvo in Crown Heights, Brooklyn - Hungry City Emily Berl for The New York Times SLEEK The backyard at Bar Corvo in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. THIRTEEN years ago, no one in Manhattan went to Brooklyn for dinner by choice. You had to dangle Peter Luger as bait, and a car service back to "the city," or at least an escort to the subway. Then Emiliano Coppa and Anna Klinger, a Venetian and an American who had fallen in love in Italy and settled in Brooklyn, opened Al di Là in Park Slope. Not the Birkenstocked, literati part of Park Slope, but Fifth Avenue, at that time a dodgy strip of boarded-up windows, five-and-dimes and unconvincing Chinese takeout. I dined at Al di Là not long after it opened. I can't claim some gastronomic second sense: I was dragged by a Brooklynite friend, and groused all the way down from the Upper West Side. I remember feeling grateful, and humbled, as I ate chubby little malfatti, pasta-less dumplings of ricotta and Swiss chard, naked as larvae, and sublime. Amanda Hesser wrote an encomium to those malfatti in The New York Times a few years later. In 2006, Frank Bruni gave Al di Là two stars. The malfatti remain on the menu. And since January, they've also been appearing at Bar Corvo, Al di Là"s new outpost on the Crown Heights side of Washington Avenue. This is canary-in-the-coal-mine territory, culinarily speaking. Real estate agents have tried to relabel the area ProCro, hitching its star to the more gentrified Prospect Heights. Bar Corvo declares its allegiance with its name: Corvo, Italian for "crow," is a salute to Crow Hill, as the northern end of Crown Heights was historically known. Ms. Klinger is chef here, as at Al di Là, but she cannot be in two places at once. Her longtime protégée, Carla Martinez, is in charge of the day to day. Al di Là"s greatest hits are reprised, at a slight discount. Chitarra neri, squid-ink pasta cut with wire, come entwined with octopus tentacles, crushed tomatoes and torn mint ($16). A spring edition of farro salad is earthy and bright, swirled with peas, almonds and ricotta salata ($9). The details seduce: sunny shards of orange confit amid pink whorls of calamari ($10); fried capers embedded in a slab of meaty, charred cauliflower ($8); a riot of horseradish curls atop a magisterial pork chop ($18). Tweaks have been made. Here the malfatti are dressed with olive oil and walnuts in lieu of brown butter and sage ($14). They are still perfect. Not everything is. On one visit, duck-leg confit ($17) was dry. Tagliatelle al ragù ($15), an Al di Là perennial, was immobilized by cheese. And Bar Corvo is less daring than its predecessor. As of yet, no tripe is on the menu, no rabbit or calf liver. Oxtail ragù lacks the briny cuttlefish that makes it a contrapuntal tour de force at Al di Là. Nevertheless, it is unfathomably rich, ladled over semolina gnocchi, then baked until the pasta has a crisp outer rim and a core as creamy as polenta ($15). Al di Là has always been run like a mom-and-pop, with Mr. Coppa at the front of the house and Ms. Klinger in the kitchen. Bar Corvo doesn't feel as personal. Where the original trattoria is cozily shabby, with peeling wallpaper, swagged velvet and mismatched china, Bar Corvo is sleek, almost studied. This is how the young folk like it these days: funnel-shaped industrial lamps, salvaged-wood tables. Cutouts in the wall frame layers of excavated paint. It is handsome, in that Brooklyn skinny-jeans-and-trilby way. Bar Corvo is not quite a destination restaurant, just the restaurant everybody wants in their neighborhood. But if its food doesn't seem completely revelatory, that is only because we are spoiled in Brooklyn now. Yes, I moved. You don't have to go all the way to Crown Heights to find great Italian cuisine. There is Roman's in Fort Greene, Franny's on Flatbush. And that old place on the corner of Fifth and Carroll - what was its name? Bar Corvo 791 Washington Avenue (Lincoln Place); Crown Heights, Brooklyn; (718) 230-0940, barcorvo.com. RECOMMENDED Calamari salad, warm farro salad, cauliflower, malfatti, semolina gnocchi with oxtail ragú, chitarra neri with octopus, ricotta cavatelli, heritage pork chop. CREDIT CARDS MasterCard and Visa. HOURS Monday to Thursday, 6 to 10:30 p.m.; Friday, 6 to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., 5 to 10 p.m. WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Entrance and dining room are level with sidewalk. Restroom is equipped with handrail.