New York City is home to restaurants of many nations, from Afghanistan to Yemen, but our nearest neighbor has been neglected until this year. The cuisine of Canada may not be the world’s most distinctive — poutine is the most familiar native dish — but that didn’t stop two Canadians from opening a West Village gastropub inspired by their homeland. Downtown entrepreneurs Jeffrey Jah and Lyman Carter have remade the beloved old Rio Mar space into a snug, clubby two-story den with a long maple bar, Quebecois paintings on the walls, and a bookshelf made from a halved canoe.

Quaint as the interior may be, the restaurant has its share of modern Manhattan touches, for better or worse. The facade is stylishly lacking a sign (except the old one for Rio Mar), the reservationists are rude, and the name of the place, the Inn LW12, is orthographically obnoxious. The food, prepared by non-Canadian Andy Bennett with some much-advertised consultation from his former employer, non-Canadian Daniel Boulud, evokes Canada at every opportunity, but the opportunities aren’t many. Apart from a maple syrup cocktail, poutine is the main contender, and much is made of it.

The dish isn’t a fancy one: a deliciously down-market bomb of french fries doused in beef gravy and chewy melted cheese curds. It’s what you eat at truck-stops or late-night diners in Quebec. But Mr. Bennett takes the idea further, offering dressed-up poutine variants that include one with trendy pork belly ($17), one with beef and melted Stilton ($18), and, to truly pervert the concept, a vegetarian version ($15). The elaborations are unnecessary; the Inn does a fine job of the basic version, with handcut fries, deeply savory gravy, and large, rich curds from just over the border. It’s a $13 side dish, but ordering it alongside a main course tends to crowd the meal, as the poutine alone is almost too much food for an average human. The Quebecois have the right idea: It’s best shared, a few hours after dinner, sitting at the cozy bar with a draft Molson. At the Inn it’s available for that purpose on a stripped-down menu that’s offered until 3 a.m.

A focus on big-flavored meats characterizes most of the rest of the food, tempered with a lightness that Mr. Bennett skillfully evokes with fresh herbs and vegetables and a keen balance in the seasoning. Duck barley soup ($13) sounds like a heavy starter, but the porcelain tureen emits a keen, vernal tang, and inside is a thin but deep-flavored clear broth with tender cubed vegetables that contrast with the duck meat’s faint gaminess. That the barley is present only on the menu, not in the bowl, helps keep things light as well. In another interesting appetizer, thin yogurt sauce with a subtle hint of curry seasoning balances the richness of a broiled piece of mackerel ($13). Irish- and German-influenced Americans eat their pigs’ feet pickled, but in French-inspired Canada, they’re preferred en terrine. At the Inn, trotter meat ($12) is shredded, spiced with mustard, and pressed into a thin sandwich between wafers of crisped bread, giving the offal an unexpected delicacy.

Such variety meats, the waiter told me, are a Canadian staple, and here Mr. Bennett gives them elegant Francophilic treatments. In one main course, he lays thin, tender slices of veal tongue on the savory cheek meat of the same animal ($27) in a hearty stew of earthy white beans and sweet little onions brightened with fresh herb snippets. The main courses range, in gastropub style, from refined compositions to casual fare. A foamy, classically rich velouté sauce spiked with smoke flavor envelops a trout fillet flanked by elegant peeled fingerlings and neat squares of sweet leek ($26). But no complication — not goat cheese filling, not harissa sauce, not creamy-textured chickpea fries — can make a mostly lamb hamburger anything but a delicious, drippingly informal hand-held affair.

For dessert, sticky toffee pudding ($7) is the obvious choice, fantastically moist and buttery, served with thick hot toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream unless you astutely request the house-made maple walnut ice cream instead.

Canadian beer, in bottles and in lovely cut-glass mugs, is the beverage of choice, and its hearty washing down of the pubby food is quite welcome. A page of wines is more global — less French — than one might expect. It offers a single Canadian red, the 2002 “Grand Vin” ($56), an impressive Bordeaux-style blend from British Columbia’s Osoyoos Larose, dark, complex, and unusual.

I don’t expect to see many more Canadian restaurants opening soon — it’s a narrow niche — but this one works. Fine food is the salvation of what might be a clumsy, awkwardly themed collision of rustic Canada with the urbane meatpacking district scene.

The Inn LW12 (7 Ninth Ave. at Little West 12th Street, 212-206-0300).