When the Olive Tree closed last year, there were a lot of very disappointed fans sorry to see the Rochester institution end its almost 30-year run. But there were a few who saw the opportunity to remake one of the city's most venerable restaurants into something new, exciting, and, yes, even sexy. Originally conceived as a pizza and gelato bar, the restaurant that recently opened as Rocco has been more than a year and a half in the making. Partners Mark Cupolo (most recently of Max Chophouse), Jeff Traphagen, and Dan Richards considered locations all over the downtown area before falling in love with the Olive Tree's tiny dining room, a perfect setting for the intimate osteria they planned to create.

Osteria, like "bistro", is a relatively loose term embracing anything from a snack bar that serves wine to a full-service restaurant. Rocco can be anything you want it to be. Although the menu is tightly focused, there is something there to make everyone smile and sigh with appreciation - house-marinated olives ($5), pizzas, and appetizers for those with small appetites (and potentially small budgets), pastas for those with a vigorous appetite, and lush entrees that beg to be swapped around the table. While you could pop in for a quick bite, this is not a "drop in" sort of place: with only 13 tables and perhaps 10 or so seats at the bar, reservations are an absolute requirement, even early in the week when other restaurants are closed or virtually empty.

That said, if you do show up without a reservation, as I did recently, Rocco's friendly and efficient staff will do everything they can to accommodate you. For my companion and I they freed up the only remaining stool at the bar and suggested that we order pizza and drinks while we waited. Although the hostess confided that the prospect for a table looked grim, within 15 minutes we were ushered into the dining room bearing our drinks, with a runner carrying our first course, a pizza with crimini mushrooms, fontina cheese, and white truffle oil ($15), behind us.

I've been pretty hard on Rochester pizza, so I'm happy to report that chefs Cupolo and Traphagen have got it right: their pizzas are perfect objects. The crust on this first pizza that we had at Rocco (we tried three over the course of two long visits and one brief drop-in for a late-night snack) was a delight. Flavorful, dense, and chewy, it straddled that very narrow line between done and burned as all good pizza does. Abundant bubbles and hot spots lined the edge of the crust, which, although wonderfully thin, still had enough backbone to stand up to the three-finger fold that is the sin qua non of good pizza. The combination of creamy and nutty fontina with earthy crimini mushrooms is itself brilliant, but dressing the pie with white truffle oil is sublime. The char of the crust along with the interplay between fruity, creamy, and pungent elements made for the best pizza I've had recently, and perhaps ever.

Struck dumb with joy by our pizza and rendered deeply agreeable with wine, my companion and I were easily swayed by the suggestions of our server, who steered us toward the happy combination of chef Cupolo's all-day roasted pork with fennel and rapini ($18) and a plate of cavaturi (a slightly larger version of cavatelli) tossed with garlic, black pepper, and parmesan cheese ($12). We also selected an appetizer of grilled octopus with salsa verde ($9) to share. Two artfully grilled skewers of tender tentacles were dressed with a spicy salsa vibrant with basil and parsley, and served over a nice salad of bitter greens. A punchy citrus vinaigrette tied the whole thing together and threw the smoke-accented cephalopod into high relief.

Taste buds tingling, we were eager for the entrees. The all-day roasted pork with fennel, a masterpiece in its own right, is so much better with a side of creamy, rich cavaturi that to miss out on the pairing may render your life fractionally less good. Chef Cupolo uses humble pork butt as the base for the dish, seasoning it with garlic and black pepper and then roasting it until it nearly dissolves into fragrant shreds. Balanced atop braised fennel and accompanied with deeply green-tasting rapini tossed with garlic, this is not the prettiest pork roast that you will ever see, but the savor will linger in your memory for days to come (and you'll be very grateful that it is so abundant that leftovers are more or less certain to come home with you).

We allowed our server to suggest another pairing on our second visit as well, settling on lemon-roasted chicken with a mushroom panzanella ($21) along with a risotto with greens and sausage ($16). Like the pork before it, the risotto had a distinctly rustic cast, but the flavor was quite good and the texture of the rice in its creamy sauce was just right, neither too mushy nor too hard. The rice, though, was really just a side-dish to the chicken next door. At first glance, I wondered whether the nearly black breast topped with a half a grilled lemon was some sort of mistake. And then I cut into it, releasing a puff of steam scented with rosemary, garlic, and lemon oil. Chicken breasts can tend toward the dry, but this was moist and tender, the meat near the bone sweet and garlicky in a way that encouraged indiscreet gnawing. The skin - especially with that grilled lemon squeezed over it - combined fat, smoke, and citrus in a wholly satisfying way. The panzanella became a convenient and savory sponge for the flavorful juices and bits that accumulated on the plate.

At Max Chophouse, Cupolo offered homemade butterscotch pudding. Here at Rocco, he offers a butterscotch buddino ($6). Looking very much like a cup of dark coffee with roasted almonds floating on top of it, the buddino is a layered dessert - silky custard on the bottom, a layer of butterscotch caramel, and a handful of toasted almonds. With the nuts bringing a tiny bit of salt and depth to both the sugar and butter goodness of the sauce and the custard underneath, this dessert is almost too good to share, and definitely too good to keep to yourself.

Rocco

165 Monroe Avenue | 454-3510

Monday-Thursday 5-9 p.m., Friday-Saturday 5-10 p.m.