Sucking the marrow out of life is all well and good, but scooping it out is so much easier.

Chef John Griffiths took over the kitchen at Truffles in Ladue several months ago, instituting an Italian-inspired menu that seizes each day, highlighting but not limiting himself to fresh, seasonal ingredients. His often painstaking and intricate techniques reflect an approach that draws upon the best of both the art and craft of cooking.

Take, for example, the roasted bone marrow ($9). A long, thick, almost cartoonish bone was roasted and cut lengthwise into two piece, with the resulting semicircular indentations perfect for use as a serving "dish." The marrow was augmented with a mixture of chopped ramps, pistachios and capers, forming a spread for the accompanying crostini that was at once primal and elegant.

Four stalks of Southern Illinois white asparagus ($10) were barely cooked, retaining their crispness and slight lemony edge. More important, they served as a sponge for a buttery sauce that was sprinkled with grated bottarga — pressed, salted and dried fish roe — that added an unusual but pleasing fishy saltiness. A poached egg with a brilliant yellow yolk and slices of orange added more complementary colors and flavors, but it was a topping of miner's lettuce — cone-leaved sprouts that resembled enoki mushrooms tinted a brilliant spring green — that gave the dish a striking, surrealistic visual appeal.

Pastas, made on site, can be had in appetizer or entree portions. If you've ever debated an additional, separate pasta course, this is a good place to indulge yourself. Strettine ($10), a ribbony pasta made green with nettles, celebrated the brief availability of fiddlehead ferns by tucking in a few of the rolled-stem greens among large trumpet mushrooms in a sauce flavored by chopped walnuts and slivers of onion.

Capellini ($10) had a concentrated flavor of the sea from sea urchin softened and slightly sweetened by mascarpone cheese and shreds of Chesapeake Bay crab.

The early courses set a high standard for the entrees, and we weren't disappointed. Griffiths is clearly fascinated by sous vide, the technique of cooking vacuum-sealed foods for hours in well-below-boiling water. Both of the meat dishes we tried — short rib ($26) and Wagyu flatiron steak ($27) — were prepared that way, as were several other entrees.

The short rib was, in fact, a single rib, albeit with a huge piece of meat attached to it, not having shrunk anywhere near as much as it would have if it had been braised. The interior had a color that would correspond to medium-rare. The texture had significantly more resistance than the ready-to-shred texture of braised ribs, yet the meat was easy to bite through. Most important, the beef flavor was more pronounced and was well-balanced by a coating of pancetta bread crumbs and a mushroom-pecan sauce.

The thick oval shape of the flatiron could have been mistaken for a filet, with a crunchy Gorgonzola gratin called a pangrattato adding a moderate blue cheese flavor. The steak was surrounded with streaks of a pre-balsamic syrup called mosto and three cippolini onions. The sous-vide cooking — and, probably, the high marbling of Wagyu beef — gave this steak a texture similar to a high-quality strip steak seared in the usual manner, although the meat had a fuller flavor than a strip.

For fish, Griffiths opts for the extra flavor of leaving in the bones. Pitted green Castelvetrano olives and segments of orange ornamented a whole lane snapper ($30), a Gulf and Caribbean fish that stared up from the plate. Our server offered to bone it for us, but we found that the top fillet of firm flesh easily separated from the bone, and then the entire skeleton zipped away nicely from the bottom fillet. The relatively mild, medium-bodied fish was nicely complemented by the combination of the salty tang of the olives and the sweetness of the orange.

(An empty plate for discarding the bones would have improved the experience. If you do order this fish, bone it completely before eating any of the flesh. Until it is boned, the lower fillet keeps cooking, causing it to lose just a touch of moistness.) ž

The dayboat fluke ($25) was a rectangle of fish with a light brown, crusted exterior that was snow-white inside. The bones were only a small section of the serving and easily removed. This fish illustrated that, like a bone-in rib eye steak, leaving the bones in while cooking a fish amplifies its flavor. The saucing was a small pool of aged balsamic, and the fish was served on a warm bean salad, appropriately minimalist accompaniments that let the fish stand out.

Truffles has long had a stellar reputation for its wine, and it continues to offer an exceptionally long list, ranging from moderately priced, well-selected domestic wines to French First Growths with prices ranging from high to stratospheric — with an extensive, varied Italian selection tucked in between.

Service was up to my expectations for a restaurant of this expense, with one exception: One of our primary waiters must have missed the pre-service meeting, because just about everything he told us — what the accompaniments were, how sauces were made and how meat was cooked, among other things — was flat-out wrong.

The main dining room seems dull, or dated, or both, with a frosted glass ceiling and murals in Hollywood-caricature and Toulouse-Lautrec styles, none of which jibes with the chef's new, envelope-pushing approach. An interior design update — perhaps I could suggest a naturalism motif, an homage to Thoreau's lusty embrace of life? — is apparently in the works. Griffiths has written an intriguing script for his food; setting a better stage would round out an already satisfying experience.

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Truffles

Two and a half stars (out of four) • Where 9202 Clayton Road, Ladue • More info 314-567-9100, trufflesinladue.com • Menu Focused on (but not limited to) seasonal Midwestern ingredients set to regional Italian recipes • Hours Dinner, Tuesday-Saturday