By Mark Goldberg

Peppy’s In The Gables is special. In fact, the revival of this cozy, 64-seat restaurant is due to its fabulous specials created by the new executive chef, Gerdy Rodriguez.

Call any day or night and ask what chef Rodriguez has planned. Maybe it will be the incredible sea bass with garbanzos. Or the lobster with lentils and foie gras. If your favorite isn’t scheduled for that evening, ask if Rodriguez can prepare it anyway. If he has the ingredients, you’ve got the dish.

Owner Joyce Kegley, who named her restaurant Peppy’s ­ short for papagallo, the Italian word for parrot, wishes she had chosen another moniker. “It sounds like Pepe’s, so people think we’re a Spanish restaurant,” she decried. Also, she is intent on keeping the original Italian menu, which has its loyal fans.

Nevertheless, there is some “Spanish” in her kitchen. He’s the 26-year-old, Cuban-born Rodriguez, who grew up in Miami and learned his trade working alongside some of the best chefs in town at Red Fish Grill, The Heights, and Jada. Before arriving at Peppy’s, he was cooking Brazilian at Barroco. At Peppy’s, chef Rodriguez pours his creative culinary talent into his own version of Northern Italian ­ “using fresh, rustic ingredients and making them into something that’s a little modern while still staying true to their roots,” he explains.

Magnificent fish and seafood
More than just “a little modern,” sea bass with chick peas ($15 as an appetizer, $25 as an entree) is a masterpiece. It begins with a stock of garbanzo mixed with pancetta, onions, and bay leaves. Slowly stewed down, it turns into a rich garbanzo nage when the tender, buttery garbanzos are enhanced with Spanish sherry reduction. A thick slab of creamy-fleshed Chilean sea bass is pan-seared to a crisp, and served with the beans topped with thin slices of earthy and aromatic black summer truffles. You will not find this treasure anywhere else. Also, it would be hard to find a better Tuscan white bean soup ($4.50) a thick, hearty stew loaded with cannellini beans and slices of sweet Italian rope sausage.

Combining sea and land, rich with mundane ingredients, the lobster cassoulet ($14), a stack of tender poached lobster meat topped with a light foie gras mousse, drizzled with port wine reduction, is set over a bed of lentils. Shrimp sambuca ($18.50), a menu item, features succulent jumbo shrimp sautéed in a sweet mix of fresh tomatoes, shallots, sambuca, white wine and a dash of cream. That alone was wonderful, but the sweet sauce doesn’t work with linguine. Perhaps the chef could kick in another shrimp and eliminate the pasta.

Back to the specials, the Italian-style Ahi tuna Napoleon ($12 as an appetizer; $24 as an entree) is unusual: slices of medium rare tuna are stacked with spinach leaves, roasted tomato confit and olive/caper tapenade, all separated by thin potato crisps.

We have seldom eaten a better or more beautifully presented Atlantic salmon ($24), topped with crispy potato feathers, crème fraîche and Iranian caviar. The generous cut of fillet is pan-seared to a crisp, yet remains moist on its bed of crimini mushrooms, braised leeks, fennel and spinach leaf, and is given an additional tang with an orange juice and basil oil drizzle. On occasion, you may want to reach for the regular menu, in particular the Cozze ($7), a marvelous bowl of fresh steamed mussels in a tarragon broth, redolent with the scents and flavors of butter, shallots, white wine and cream.

Simple, delicious meat dishes
Unusually good is the richly-flavored steak tartare ($10 as an appetizer). Coarsely-ground dark red Angus beef tenderloin, blended with shallots, a touch of garlic, Worcestershire, freshly squeezed lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil, is topped with a raw quail egg still in the shell with the tip delicately removed. Pour it onto the beef and enjoy, along with the accompanying crostini and light balsamic reduction.

The Angus filet mignon ($25) is a simple dish lusciously accented by the size and quality of the pan-seared beef. Perfectly cooked to order, the tender meat is lightly drizzled with gorgonzola sauce, set over a bed of sauteed fresh spinach, and served with endive salad. The rack of lamb ($27) was excellent. Four meaty, heavily-seared and oven-roasted domestic chops come alive in a Barolo and mint essence sauce. The accompanying root vegetable ratatouille is original, and utterly delicious.

While a great tasting concept, the duck salad ($14) ­ a take on canard à l’orange, accompanied by a phyllo purse of thick and moist duck confit mixed with fresh mushrooms and truffle oil, a slice of blood orange, and drizzled with a white port/cinnamon reduction, was less successful. The thick cuts of pan-seared, crispy duck breast were a bit tough.

Surprisingly good desserts
The desserts are surprisingly big in taste and outstanding in quality. Even the tiramisú, which we usually shun, is different in texture, and rich with coffee flavors. What we were told is the most popular item: a chocolate soufflé, is really the now ubiquitous, molten chocolate cake, albeit well-prepared, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. But the three-layer chocolate mousse chunk cake (the chunks are Swiss chocolate) is truly outstanding ­ a chocolate lover’s dream. The simple puff pastry strawberry Napoleon layered with crème pâtissière is light as air, and very good. The jewel of the crown is a superb Amaretto cheesecake.

If going to Peppy’s, ask for the specials, and discover the making of a new culinary talent.

Mark Goldberg is a dining critic and a freelance copywriter.