Chef Barry Koslow. Photograph by Steve Barrett.

A lot of chefs consider fish a poor cousin to meat, which affords greater opportunities for extracting and intensifying flavors. As a result, they often try to force a fish into the role of meat—or go the minimalist route of surrounding a piece of fish with a wan ensemble of vegetable and starch.

Barry Koslow, who took over the kitchen of this Georgetown place last September, does neither. A black sea bass in a broth of mussel juice and saffron with coins of fiery chorizo and braised fennel is that rare fish plate in which all the components are harmonized into a single statement, making you realize that delicacy and lusciousness aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s a stunner, and much of his other work with fish comes close, including a loin of seared yellowtail with grated ginger and taro root—a dish as lively as the cocktail-party din of the cozy space.

An Alexandria native who apprenticed under Michel Richard, Jonathan Krinn, and Todd Gray, Koslow is a cook’s cook, his dishes absent of flash and blind to trends. His background is classical French, but he wears his learning lightly, whether he’s turning out a bacon-wrapped wedge of mousselike rabbit pâté, a dark-crusted venison chop whose soft interior more closely approximates that of a pork chop, or a breast of duck at least half of whose pleasure is in the skin, as salty and crispy as a bag of chips.

Occasionally he overreaches, as with a parsnip soup topped with smoked oysters, and underreaches, as with a grilled Caesar salad. And his wine-friendly cooking calls for a broader list than the fleshy reds and fuller-bodied whites that are a carryover from management’s previous fixation with Napa. But Koslow brings impressive rigor and finesse to what was already a pretty good restaurant, with the promise of more.