If there ever was a cuisine more apt to garner scrutiny from every kind of critic than Italian, I dare you to prove it.

Italian food is the one un-American American category of food about which everyone, from wise critics to amateur gastronomes to regular pasta-loving descendants of pasta lovers, has an opinion. It's the one category of introduced cuisine that may as well be our own because we know it so well. We're as collectively qualified to sound off on Italian food as we are on burgers and fries.

So pity the people who open an Italian restaurant, even if the restaurant is in Italian-less Honolulu. Because even though we do saimin noodles better than we do spaghetti noodles, it's pretty safe to assume that every one of us has something to say about the new Italian place.

I can say this about it: At Banana Leaf Pasta Cafe, the food is populist and straightforward, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The 45-item menu at the sleekly cozy eatery whose interior reflects Asia more than southern Europe (but is anyone really surprised?) isn't Sunday dinner at the Lombardis', but neither is it Thursday spaghetti and meatballs at the school cafeteria. It's satisfying Italian-inspired food that gets the two most important components right: the pasta and the sauce.

Despite the somewhat lengthy menu, most of the dishes are versions of each other whose main players are either the pasta or the sauce, which also means that most of the dishes work.

Don't bother with the starters. The pre-dinner menu is uneventful — appetizers for appetizers' sake. Skip them and go right for the main pasta dishes.

Among them, I loved the chicken with anchovy spaghettini ($10.95). The firm pasta — al dente, as it were — was dipped (not swimming) in a thin butter sauce and tossed with sweet slices of sauteed garlic and warm, tender capers that hadn't been thrown in as an afterthought, as capers often are. These were allowed to soften and sweeten in the sauce, which rendered the often forgettable buds a crucial addition to the simple dish. The chunks of tender chicken and the anchovies were there for substance more than taste, but they provided it nicely, and without disrupting the dish's delicate balance.

There is also a meatball spaghettini ($8.95) in which the restaurant's biggest triumph, its marinara sauce, is at its most realized. The sauce, a light-colored tomato sauce that has been seasoned until no one flavor trounces another and in which every flavor is a star, is paired with fluffy Italian meatballs that were bright with parsley and fiery with garlic and chilis.

As with almost every dish at Banana Leaf, it was the sauce that made the shrimp and scallop fettuccine ($13.95) a satisfying success. Where most cream sauces take the cream part a bit too seriously, this light version of the sauce was all creamy flavor without the heaviness of cream that had been thickened and processed until it was five minutes away from becoming butter.

The same is true of the chicken fettuccine ($9.95) and the restaurant's five risotto dishes ($9.95 to $13.95), all of which satisfy a taste for richness while easing (or is it tricking?) a more health-conscious mind.

Where the sauce can't elevate the dish is with the restaurant's short pizza menu ($7.25 to $10.95). The mealy crust, which is bought ready-made, is too much of a distraction, and the little pies come out of a too-cool oven undercooked and pale. Pick pasta instead.

And though everything on the menu is a riff on something more Italian or more refined, many of the dishes on three occasions were consistently well-balanced and satisfying, and served by a very young but attentive staff. Service can be slow, but it's due to the staff's inexperience, not its unwillingness to serve its patrons toward whom the servers are unerringly deferential.

And they'll always ask if you'd care for dessert, and to this you must answer only one way: "Yes, please. I'll take the panna cotta." The tiramisu sadly misses every mark. The mascarpone-to-cream-and/or-egg ratio is sorely unbalanced, leaving a semisolid mass of triple-cream Italian cheese weighing heavily on a scant and oversoaked layer of ladyfingers. And the cream puffs? They're frozen. Resist the temptation and go with the panna cotta.