Lannie Ahn opened her gem-like Korean-French restaurant D’Or Ahn last year in September. I thought the inventive cooking, by talented chef Rachel Yang, was wonderful. It heralded, I wrote at the time, a “new nouveau-Korean wave.” But the restaurant’s artistry was misunderstood, and its reception was mixed. Ms. Yang left within a year, and the restaurant scaled down. I stuck my head in for some broiled yellowtail during the minute or two this fall when it was a sushi parlor called Anzu. Now Ms. Ahn has replaced the stylish, imposing banquettes with low wooden tables, covered the discreet façade with a colorful mural, and re-rebranded as Izakaya Ten.

The word “izakaya” is in the wind this season, as the sake- and snack-driven Japanese taverns gain popularity around the city. Ten is calmer than the frenetic, smoky izakayas of St. Mark’s Place, but it has their easygoing charm. Most of the dishes on the lengthy menu are under $10: It takes at least five of them to make a filling meal. In the hands of Japanese-born and raised Thomas Kato, who last worked at Morimoto, they range from familiar edamame and sushi to traditional and semi-traditional exotica involving raw and fermented things.

Given the somewhat creative history of the space and the chef, one might expect him to reinterpret or spruce up the classics for a Chelsea crowd. But sukiyaki ($8), tempura ($6), California rolls ($6), and their friends are all nothing more than good, faithful renditions — the sukiyaki’s beef and egg aswim in hot, oniony soy and the tempura crunchy and light.

More interesting, though, are dishes like scallop nanban zuke ($5), in which the delicately sweet bivalve is fried and then marinated in spicy vinaigrette. Floating with pickled onion strips in the subtle soy vinegar, the scallops have an appealing bite. Many of the best snacks rotate on and off the daily specials list. In a variant of shrimp tempura ($8), firm shrimps are wrapped with pungent shiso leaves and filled with smooth ground shrimp, which adds a fourth texture to the respective crunch, tug, and chew of the batter, leaf, and body. Nasu hasami ($6) is like a classy Japanese cognate of the batter-dipped, deep-fried Monte Cristo sandwich; here the filling is succulent, salty ground pork and the “bread” is hot, crisped Japanese eggplant.

Pork belly can be had grilled in chewy, flavorful, bacon-like strips, seasoned with ginger ($6) or mild kimchi ($8), which is perhaps the only holdover from the restaurant’s Korean incarnation. It’s also simmered whole in soy broth ($4.50) for an altogether more unctuous experience. A little dish of grilled mini-wieners ($5) comes with hot mustard — for a second, you could be in a German restaurant, until the meat’s tender richness proves it to be Japanese heritage-breed kurobuta pork.

Raw octopus, cut up and served in a tenderizing wasabi marinade ($5) has a firm chew that’s very fresh, like something you’d eat still wiggling, right off the end of your spear gun. It’s a matter of taste, like natto, the sticky, stringy, smelly soy goo that’s somewhere between fermented and rotten. A staple of Japanese breakfasts, in America it’s more the stuff of dares, but with a neat finesse Mr. Kato mitigates the unusual texture and taste by putting it in an omelet topped with thick raw tuna slices ($8), where it adds a subtle and inarguably welcome fillip.

In my experience, the service staff is much more on-the-ball than in the D’Or Ahn days, when delays and mix-ups were common. At Izakaya Ten they’re as competent as they are gracious, but they consistently steered me toward the menu’s least interesting offerings, preferring perhaps to bore rather than shock American palates. The management would be wise to reconsider that strategy.

The front page of the menu bears a handy graph, plotting the restaurant’s 20 sake offerings on two axes, dry/sweet and light/full. A choice of shochu (the Asian vodka that a legal loophole permits on wine lists) is poured on the rocks or blended with a selection of mixers — lime, plum, Calpico milk soda — into cocktails called chuhai.

With its simple, excellently realized dishes, Izakaya Ten is what it is, but it’s not what it was. The closing of D’Or Ahn — and the loss of delights like oxtail cake and toro prosciutto — was a sad passing. The new spot is fine and comfortable and, with its menu’s deft combination of classics and challenges, perhaps likelier to succeed commercially, but it’s unlikely to inspire the same level of feeling.

Izakaya Ten (207 Tenth Ave., between 22nd and 23rd streets, 212-627-7777.)