Yes, you can get spaghetti and meatballs; the kitchen is unashamed of its polpette, and, for that matter, sides of spaghetti unabashedly come with most mains. Unless ordering a plate with really robust red sauce, we can do without the garlic and butter version; it has little charm of its own. Fortunately, there are some red sauces that are robust to the point of pugnacity.

Consider, for example, the “Livornese” sauce that can be had with mains such as orange roughy. It’s an almost dazzlingly bright composition of tomato, sliced celery, and gobs of garlic, and when mated to a supremely flaky fillet turns a common fish into an object of uncommon desire. We’re less thrilled with the lemon butter sauces that follow in the footsteps of other restaurant’s greats, the iconic “Shrimp Paesano” foremost among them, but that’s only because Livorno trumps lemon.

Snapper comes seven ways at Piccolo’s, bested only by ten veal dishes in the old-school mode. Antipasti of note include cold, marinated calamari, a welcome respite from the tiresome fried version. We expected a little more of classic pasta dishes such as the lasagne, however. It’s constructed as it should be, and the meat filling is plentiful, but for us the dish counts too heavily on a red sauce that’s good but not la nonna. Still, if taken in the spirit of Piccolo’s Bay of Naples mural, and with a hearty red from a wine list that’s better than expected, maybe nonna’s spirit, too, can be summoned.