It's hard to hide a decent restaurant in this town. But the folks at Valleta have done a great job, operating under the foodie radar for most of the past two months. This was possible primarily because the restaurant shares the same name as the previous tenant, a Budvar-pouring pub with no great menu. However, once people started to try the creative, unusual dishes from new owner Filip Blazek, word had to get out.

Inside it still looks like the old place, with tables and chairs in basic pine and an unusual though nonfunctional clock perched on one wall. However, a few concessions to the gastronomic nature of the kitchen have been added: racks of high-end cookbooks from various countries and several posters of legendary French wines. Nonetheless, Valleta is at least moderately priced, if immoderate in its ambitions: Budvar is still on draft and the napkins are still paper, but the food is clearly top-shelf.

Among starters, there's an excellent broccoli soup, pale green and creamy, topped with dots of pumpkinseed oil and crumbled niva cheese for a sour-salty bite. A few small dumplings sit in the broth, browned like little sausages, though they're sweet, rather than salty, filled with sugary, earthy hazelnuts. It's an amazing variety of tastes — vegetal, spicy, creamy, sweet, sour and salty — in a single dish.

Other starters continue with the theme of complexity — and an affinity for sweet things. Napoleons are generally sugary pastries, but Blazek serves a savory version made of crisp puff pastry, chunks of crab meat, grilled pineapple and sliced artichokes served with a fragrant yogurt-mint sauce. Another starter stuffs figs with more niva cheese and wraps them in curry-scented fried dough, pairing them with a sweet forest fruit sauce that tastes like strong black tea.

Main courses include variations on chicken, beef and lamb. The least expensive, a cut of well-cooked chicken breast, is served with spinach and a loose, house-made spring roll filled with mushrooms and onions. The chicken breast is painted with a chunky tomato purée and topped with grilled spears of spring onions and green asparagus, a full and filling meal even without the recommended side dish of caramelized ginger risotto. However, I would recommend ordering that anyway, even if you're not going to be able to finish everything, as it is creamy and sweet and gingery in all the right ways: a star.

Another main course pairs perfectly cooked lamb with big chunks of grilled mushrooms and zucchini, as well as slices of salty, fresh sheep's cheese and a tomato spread much like chutney, in addition to a recommended side dish of thick, mushroom gnocchi. Also good is the roast duck with apricots, but here the tastes started to get out of line, with way too much salt and paprika on the stewed apricots when I tried them. Also disappointing was the accompanying "strudel," a bit too doughy and thick. The duck was fine, however.

The wine list is limited to relatively inexpensive bottles, most of which are from abroad. Among wines from Spain, the 2002 tempranillo from Castillo de Maluenda is a dry, tannic red with nice blackberry scents that pairs well with the lamb.