Star light, star bright, shine down on me tonight. If there’s a restaurant in San Diego wholly deserving of the nursery rhyme verse, it’s Cody’s La Jolla during the dinner hour.

Set in a restored historic cottage near the foot of La Jolla Cove on a minor stretch of Girard Avenue where few pedestrians wander, the patio and white picket fence surrounding it serves as an established beacon for hearty morning and lunch fare. Yet it wasn’t until August that the eight-year-old eatery extended its hours and rolled out a snazzy supper menu of contemporary haute cuisine, authored by Chef Joseph Barraco, formerly of Napa Valley Grille.

Based on a pleasant and very quiet visit we made to Cody’s recently, I’d venture to guess that even many La Jollans are still in discovery mode about the eatery’s post-sunset offerings.

My companion and I arrived to the warmth of soft flames flickering inside a quaint fireplace with a guitarist strumming peacefully beside it. A flat-screen television hanging from a corner near the semi-open kitchen was playing “That ’70s Show.” Only a couple of tables were occupied as a glut of staff dressed in casual wear idled in the void of commotion. Though the pace never picked up, we happily absorbed the unpretentious ambience of this cute wooden structure, painted mostly white against the hues of butternut squash accenting the interior.

A colorfully sauced Duck Confit Quesadilla was a zesty start to our meal. It was striped with sour cream and queso fresco and led into a generous layer of rich meat interspersed with red onion and raw bits of jalapeno, which taste far livelier than those omnipresent dull-green jalapenos fished out of brine. Our other appetizer was a dish of crab cakes that we initially deemed as under-spiced until swiping them more vigorously through their puddle of heirloom tomato gazpacho. Had the chef doctored up the cakes with too many other flavors, the infusion of the intensely fresh gazpacho would have been wasted, we realized.

Our salads lived up to today’s imaginative standards. My companion’s was an arrangement of firm, fresh beets circling a frizz of baby watercress speckled with creamy goat cheese from Sonoma. Mine was a medley of field greens with candied walnuts, sliced apples and bleu cheese made more novel with the addition of little crispy curls of prosciutto hiding between the lettuces.

My fond memories of eating Chef Barraco’s Crispy Free-Range Half Chicken at Napa Grille played back with much temptation when I saw that he took the recipe with him to Cody’s. This is an excellent preparation in which he cooks the bird skin-side down, allowing the meat to render in its own fat. It’s then finished off in the oven and comes out crackly and fiercely homey tasting.

We also found that he does wonders with beef short ribs, braising them in red wine, demi glace and a touch of chicken stock. The result is a high-powered jus that seeps deliciously into an accompaniment of creamy Gorgonzola polenta and bitterly good sautéed broccoli rabe.

A mondo-sized New York steak flanked by unique portobello mushroom “steak fries” was unfortunately a little tough on the molars, despite the high-quality purveyor Barraco uses for his hormone-free meats. The steak is pan seared, which my companion didn’t mind, especially coupled with the strapping shallot-cabernet reduction sitting underneath. But in terms of beef flavor, I could have overlooked its hardiness much easier had a flame grill come into the equation.

Adding something of a coffeehouse feel to the atmosphere is a lineup of cakes and pies displayed in glass pedestal trays on the service counter. The owner’s wife makes them fresh every morning. The triple-layer carrot cake with caramel topping was dreamy, as was the rich, flourless chocolate cake that left my companion moaning rather loudly. But so what; we were the only customers in the dining room at that point.

The daytime menu, we’re told, ropes in more traffic that seizes upon a selection of omelets incorporating everything from forest mushrooms, crab and Tasso ham to Manchego cheese and lemon basil. And then there’s the famous BLT on the lunch card that comes with seven slices of bacon and guacamole.

With a limited wine list and premium beers, plus a wholesome gourmet approach to cooking, it’s just a matter of time before Cody’s moves into the dinnertime

spotlight.