When you subtitle your restaurant "the neighborhood bistro," it helps to be in a great neighborhood.

With a farmers market, a spice shop, and an oil and vinegar boutique all on the same block, Maplewood provides the new restaurant Nosh with all the right ingredients. (Wise arbiters of taste might even deem Nosh's immediate vicinity a "hip 'hood.")

And the kitchen at Nosh finds many clever ways to put all of these ingredients together. Consider, for example, watermelon salad ($8).

A simple but near-perfect tribute to all things seasonal, the salad begins with local blackberries marinated in an aromatic strawberry vinegar from Vom Fass, a store just down the street. The sweet watermelon juices mix in to form a fruity vinaigrette, topped off with mint and its cousin basil. Feta cheese and nuts provide a creamy tang and some crunch.

The precise style of Nosh is difficult to define. A single-page menu, identical for lunch and dinner, offers primarily salads and sandwiches, with a brief variety of kebabs and an additional category of "noshes" that serves as a catch-all for anything else.

On a recent visit, the final group included a hummus platter, grilled clams, calamari and something called a "lobster lollie."

The lollie ($14) was a relatively cheap way to satisfy a lobster craving: 3- to 4-ounce rock lobster tail, lightly seasoned and grilled to a slight caramelization before being brushed with garlic butter. The base was lemon couscous flavored with whole blueberries and crumbles of feta, along with three thin asparagus spears and some grilled squash.

Calamari ($9) was coarsely breaded and, unlike many presentations of this dish, arranged on the plate with tentacle sections standing up amid the rings. The accompanying 'spicy tandoori" sauce was an unusual but pleasing dip, primarily flavored with curry powder but carrying a red-pepper kick at the end.

Sandwiches at Nosh are ornate; a portobello wrap ($8) framed the various colors of mushroom slices, grilled red pepper, artichoke hearts, onions and a goat-cheese-and-feta blend with a boldly colored (and also grilled) spinach tortilla.

Grilled chicken gouda ($9) wasn't quite as involved, but it nicely matched marinated chicken breasts with smoky gouda and fresh pesto.

Remarkable Billy Goat chips as an alternative for a side dish were an excellent touch.

Service was enthusiastic but sometimes erratic.

We ordered the lobster lollie as a second choice after the kitchen had run out of another item, and the server failed to note (after our menus had already been taken) that the lollie and the shrimp kebab were identical except for the primary ingredient.

A leisurely pace is OK at dinnertime, but lunch took entirely too long for anyone in the middle of a workday.

The price, however, is certainly right — and Nosh will have plenty of opportunity to mix up its menu using seasonal ingredients procured from the many sources nearby in Maplewood.