Melange means mixture, or medley, and that's what Atul Vaidya (a medical doctor who has worked as a restaurant consultant in India and Asia) envisioned for his first restaurant. Melange Bistro Bar, on Sixth Street, Downtown, is an international restaurant, one not restricted to the cuisine of any one country, but instead offering a menu of greatest hits from around the globe.

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Melange Bistro Bar

Food:

1 star = Good
Ratings explained

Service:

1 star = Good
Ratings explained

Atmosphere:

1 1/2 stars = Good+
Ratings explained

Overall:

1 star = Good
Ratings explained

136 Sixth St.
Downtown
412-325-4310

www.melangebistrobar.com

Hours: Monday-Tuesday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Wednesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; Friday, 11-2 a.m., Saturday, 2 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Basics: This new addition to the Cultural District brings even more options to an already diverse dining scene, with international cuisine, live jazz performances and a spacious bar area.

Recommended dishes: Saganaki, smoked-salmon-stuffed crab cakes, spiced lamb and couscous, mango shrikhand, caramel flan.

Prices: Appetizers, $5-$12; salads, $5.50-$18; entrees, $19-$42; desserts, $7.

Wine: The wine list is still being developed and more bottles will be added soon. The current list is organized loosely by varietal; it lacks vintage dates but includes the occasional Wine Spectator rating. It emphasizes red wine over white both by the glass and the bottle. Six whites and 14 reds by the glass, $6.50 to $11; by the bottle, $25 to $80 with more than a dozen bottles for $35 or less.

Summary: Wheelchair accessible; credit cards accepted; reservations available for parties of all sizes; corkage, $12 per bottle.

Noise level: Loud to very loud.

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The menu doesn't adhere as closely to that idea as it might -- plenty of dishes have no named geographic origin or one so loose as to be irrelevant (such as the Oregon spring salad with smoked salmon and blueberries). Whatever the original concept, Melange doesn't fit easily into existing restaurant paradigms. Its lack of a clear category might be one reason it appears to be more popular as a lunch spot and a bar than as a dinner destination.

The lunch menu emphasizes value and speed, promising to serve nine sandwich-type entrees in nine minutes, all of which include soup or salad and cost $9. At night, there are frequent live jazz shows or other entertainment, and the wine list includes a lot of affordable (if not necessarily inspired) choices. During one weekday evening visit, I didn't see a single party in the dining room area, while the bar area held about a dozen groups.

The restaurant design suffers from similar disjointedness. The restaurant is divided in half, and while the dining space might technically be larger, the bar area seems open and inviting. The dining area seems cramped and oddly laid out. Tall booths act as dividers between the spaces, and eating in one feels a little like being sequestered. The room's arrangement makes things hard on servers as well, because they practically need to pace back and forth in the aisle between tables and booths to keep an eye on the customers hidden from view.

Decorative elements are restricted to generic framed photographs in black and white -- Jackson Pollock at work shares a wall with a basketball game and a jazz musician. The restaurant looks as if it were designed for a busy international airport, a space that makes everyone feel equally far from home.

There is good, even very good, cooking happening here. It's just not happening all the time or on the same plate. House-made pickled vegetables (jardiniere) were a pleasant surprise on an antipasti platter ($9) that was otherwise incredibly dreary. Bland Gruyere tasted as if it had been sliced, then left uncovered to go stale. Cornichons were weirdly soft. Tomato basil bruschetta consisted of toasted slices of pedestrian baguette and a small bowl of chopped, under-ripe, underseasoned tomatoes.

The crab cake ($11) sampled at another visit was a much better choice. Thin and moist, it almost fell apart at the touch of a fork to reveal pieces of smoked salmon stuffed inside. Warm, moist and crabby, with the added richness of the salmon, this was a lovely specimen of Pittsburgh's favorite appetizer.

The tableside preparation of saganaki ($8) is fun, but once the flames are doused, gooey cheese and pita bread seem less exciting.

Minted chicken shashlik, described as chicken breast meat marinated in yogurt and cilantro-mint chutney, could have used a little less heat. The pieces of chicken were overcooked and tough, without a hint of the promised herb flavor. It's unusual to see dishes of such varying qualities come out of the same kitchen, and the contrasts became all the more extreme when it came to the entrees.

Native American fire salmon ($24) was overcooked and almost gray in color, with an unpalatable, fishy taste. But the corn puree layered beneath it was sweet, creamy and absolutely delectable.

Spiced lamb and couscous ($34) was the restaurant's best dish, and demonstrates what fine food chef Douglas Noxon is capable of preparing. Juicy lamb tenderloin was coated with a 20-plus-ingredient Moroccan spice mix, perfuming the plate with mint, coriander and cumin. Couscous and sauteed peppers, zucchini and onions were simple, but delicious, accompaniments.

If only more dishes could have been so harmoniously devised. Coffee can be an excellent addition to beef (think chili made with coffee or coffee-rubbed braised short ribs) but the coffee-crusted beef medallions were on the thin side, resulting in a gritty ratio of crust to meat. The accompaniments -- sweet and juicy grilled pineapple and addictively crunchy haystack potatoes -- were fantastic alone, but made strange bedfellows in this dish ($31).

Desserts (all $7) were in some ways a pleasant surprise. Noxon makes an excellent flan, though true flan devotees might complain that it tastes a little less eggy (a little more like a panna cotta) than it should. Light and creamy, with hints of cinnamon, it's garnished with drizzles of caramel, a pile of real whipped cream and a single strawberry. The mango shrikhand, served in a martini glass, is like a fresh, fruity mango pudding topped with crunchy pistachios and chunks of mango.

The chocolate chip cookies served with a glass of milk are a lovely idea, but they're not worth the 20-minute wait. On two separate occasions the cookies were greasy and grainy with scorched chocolate chips. Perhaps that's why servers don't bother mentioning them in advance of the dessert course.

Service was generally a little confused, but the difficult layout combined with loud music over the sound system one evening and an even louder live jazz band on another probably had something to do with it.

Melange certainly brings something new to the Cultural District dining scene. But at the moment, different isn't better, it's just different.