Don’t let the brutal sterility of the new Hilton San Diego Bayfront scare you from eating at Vela. The spacious restaurant is hidden one floor below the lobby of this colorless, 30-story edifice that adjoins the San Diego Convention Center in a continuum of bland concrete decking. From nearly every angle, the hotel’s modern-style architecture fails to charm the soul – unless your heart is made of cement and glass.

Vela’s big-windowed interior is equally vapid, an over-study of beige that cries for potted plants, splashes of paint, whimsical art pieces or even a few glamour posters of Paris Hilton gazing blankly from one of the pallid walls. Fill it with anything! Hundreds of square feet of boldly patterned carpeting in black and – ugh – banquet-room tan, plus a few softly colored sheer curtains serve as the only visual stimulants until your booze and food arrive.

And therein lies the good news. Vela’s atmospheric deficiencies are duly compensated by everything that goes into your mouth, from intelligent wines and muddled fruit cocktails to sprightly salads and protein entrées complimented by local produce and elegant sauces. Chef de Cuisine Adam Bussell, formerly of The Ivy’s Quarter Kitchen, focuses intensely on both the primary and peripheral ingredients in all of his dishes, achieving clean and balanced flavor outcomes that taste effortlessly exquisite.

Where Bussell pushes the envelope, he hits high marks. His heirloom squash tortellini, for instance, goes to where no tortellini has gone before. Served on a teardrop plate, the pillowy pasta are coated lightly in browned butter and served with a smidgen of currant jam and tarragon. Candied walnuts in the scheme strike a mouthwatering contrast in texture to the ultra-smooth squash filling, while advancing the dish’s overall sweetness to an uncommon level.

Adhering to a California coastal format, Bussell also presents as a starter a trio of sushi-grade seafood: yellowtail, king salmon and scallops – the latter mixed in a lovely aioli of sea urchin and radishes. Extra-salty crostini served alongside, however, is an affront to the delicate flavors of these ocean creatures.

Fresh organics took center stage in a salad using local beets, spicy lettuces and herby vinaigrette. The salad, on a puddle of frothy goat cheese, sent its distinctive tangy vapors straight to the top of the veggie pile.

Yet it was the cumin-infused vegetable soup that had me emailing the chef afterwards for his recipe, and not without urging him to put it into frequent rotation. An entire garden went into this soup, which uses a base of chicken broth that bows to cabbage, baby fennel, celery root, cauliflower, carrots and purple and yellow potatoes. Bussell toasts the cumin beforehand, a necessary technique for teasing out its herbaceous flavor compounds.

In ordering our entrées with squinted eyes, I agreed with my dining companion that the off-white sparkly menu paper needs to go. The graphic designers might also consider raising the font size to above what we struggle to see in the bottom lines of a vision test. Pass the penlight please.

Nonetheless, our main courses were a bold and beautiful sight to sore eyes. Kurobuta pork shank is cooked sous-vide, a French method that involves packing meat or vegetables into vacuum-sealed bags and poaching them in water at relatively low temperatures. Foods prepared in this fashion are ultimately more tender and flavorful. And in the case of fine-quality, bone-in pork shank, it’s a fast pass to nirvana. Bussell complements the meat with a judicious brushing of honey-soy glaze, serving the mondo shank alongside roasted baby apples crowned with braised purple cabbage. If you’re looking for a bright wine match to this dish, the Walla Walla Valley merlot from Washington State is foolproof.

My companion chose organic chicken breast augmented simply by robust sherry jus, wild mushrooms and lightweight mascarpone gnocci. No crazy stuffing and no over-seasoned skin. But not boring either, given the clean poultry juices that run through the dish.

We took a backward stretch to the cocktail list for dessert, ordering an effervescent non-alcoholic “Venus” made with strawberries, mint and ginger syrup, plus a Banana Republic boasting 10 Cane Rum and 99 Bananas schnapps. Sweet whistle wetters, but they didn’t avert us from trying a chocolate pyramid oozing some sort of orange and berry liquid from its center. It was a marvelous creation that marked an honorable homerun on the culinary scoreboard.

Service was largely efficient, our waitress demonstrating good wine knowledge and familiarity with the food menu. The bussing, however, slipped a bit when it came to water refills and obtaining cutting knives when our entrées were served, even though our meats were so tender we really didn’t need them.

But Vela is an infant, opening in December in conjunction with the 1,190-room hotel that soars above. So new, the restaurant and jumbo corridors leading to it still smell of fresh building materials. Yet so aesthetically barren, you might want to tote in your own wall paintings.