The one dish at Mona’s I can recommend without reservation might also be the menu’s greatest mistake. The dish is an appetizer of bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Gorgonzola ($7.95), a two-bite haute bar snack guaranteed to win you a return invitation to the coolest Super Bowl party in town. Can you tire of the contrast from crisp to chewy to creamy, from fatty savor to mellow sweetness to salty tang? I cannot.

These bacon-wrapped dates are a holdover from the menu at Modesto Tapas Bar & Restaurant, which Brendan Marsden and Julie Block Fernandez closed last August, ending a 15-year run on the Hill. After a two-month makeover — less a wholesale renovation than a brightening up — the business partners reopened the space as Mona’s, an “American-Italian joint.”