“This is the best restaurant these walls have seen since the mid 1980s,” I blurted to my dinner companion as our waitress poured tri-mushroom cream soup from a spouted silver crucible over mini slabs of mushroom terrine sitting in our bowls. The liquid, bewitching in aroma and flavor, was among a litany of exquisite consumables that quickly proved The Better Half is really a perfected “whole” in terms of tableside service, wine selection and food quality.

Zubin Desai, an advanced sommelier hailing from Blanca, recently opened the refined Hillcrest restaurant in a circa-1920 bungalow that has housed a merry-go-round of kitchens over past decades: The Abbey, Talus Café and Russo’s House, to name a few. The panache that each lacked in varying degrees has been duly remedied by Desai’s high standard of service and sweeping wine inventory sold in half bottles, thus the restaurant’s name. He’s also pulled together a staff of veteran foodies and winos who will match with precision things like homemade paté or antelope osso buco to the right grape.

Chef John Robert Kennedy, formerly with Café One Three, steps up to the plate with a menu of contemporary dishes that includes such cherished delicacies as apple-stuffed quail, uncured pork belly, Cajun frog legs and Texas antelope. Having worked under culinary bigwigs Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter, visitors can expect remarkable flavor juggling augmented in part with fresh herbs from Kennedy’s on-site patio garden. (On Sundays you can catch Kennedy in his white chef attire loading up a pull wagon with seasonal produce at the Hillcrest farmer’s market.)

The “leaning tower of beets” is a stunning first course using gold and red Chioggia beets mounted vertically on a base of diced haricots verts (fresh green beans). Sharing plate space was a tangle of greens and heirloom tomatoes dressed in sweet, emulsified white balsamic vinaigrette designed to counter the pungent, earthy overtones of the potassium-rich beets. The dish is light and irresistible and easily feeds three people.

The starter menu also features a tart du jour (onion and Chevre cheese the night we visited), and “always changing” soup dispensed tableside over some type of dry ingredient that arrives in your bowl. Ours was a compacted trio of morel, shiitake and pink lobster mushrooms that softened deliciously as the creamy fungi liquid cascaded over them. A half bottle of light-bodied Ribera del Duero from northern Spain that we ordered was beautifying, offering soft acidity that admirably quelled the soup’s scant use of cream.

Seared, uncured pork belly completely wowed us – better than any pork roast or chop you’ll ever eat. The chef starts off with a four-inch-thick slab of the meat and braises it for eight hours in ham stock. It’s then finished off with aged-sherry vinaigrette infused with sage. The result is ultimately tender pork loaded with tongue-friendly fat that dissolves in your mouth much like high-grade Kobe beef.

Completing our lineup of starters was “Gravlax à la Better Half,” an excellent noshing plate of prettily arranged house-cured salmon, fresh dill, chopped eggs, springy buckwheat crêpes and chopped onions. Ramekins of crème fraiche and dill mustard on the plate added verve to the ingredients, and, in particular, helped to mask the excessive saltiness of the fish (my only complaint of the evening).

Bone matter played a vital role in our entrées, saturating our meat choices with the flavor and body of marrow that often goes missing in American dishes. My companion’s bone-in antelope osso buco revealed a decadently homey, sage-like taste that was less gamy than we expected. The tender shank paired supremely with savory white beans and mirepoix, the latter translating to butter-sautéed onions, carrots and celery. (Yes, there is significant French methodology used in this kitchen.)

I chose the braised short rib served on a slab of bone that jutted its rustic flavor into an accompanying cauliflower “mash” kissed with a smidgen of horseradish. The rib’s flesh was expectedly tender and waltzed smoothly with cabernet reduction and a little mushroom-spiked cream, all of which found a home with an earthy Rhone Valley syrah blend that Desai recommended with our main courses.

The beauty of the restaurant’s half-bottle wine program is that you can jump varietals as your meal progresses without racking up waste or getting too sauced for that matter. There are currently more than 100 labels to choose from originating from major regions of the world. And equally unique is the restaurant’s shockingly low $5 corkage fee if you tote in your own juice. Share it with a staffer and the fee is waived.

The Better Half delivers a true slice of fine dining to Hillcrest, given its attention to detail and meal amenities that include a refreshing sorbet intermezzo served in miniature sugar cones and a surprise side dish of the chef’s signature sautéed Brussel sprouts bestowed to customers who order full entrées. Few neighborhood restaurants can toot such a polished horn.