The concept of Little Dishes is present more in its name than on its menu. The name, in fact, sounds a singular wrong note, inflicting a too-firm dictum on this humble, eager-to-please restaurant.

In fact, the new Park Slope destination, like most restaurants, offers both little and big dishes, and serves them in courses, in that order. Chef Colin Wright cooks a tremendously appealing brand of American food with no preciosity or pretension. The dishes, big and small, are eminently sharable, but more for the joy of it than due to any tapas-style enforcement. No plate has more than a few ingredients, and none of them are even faintly exotic, but they’re exactingly chosen and combined, to excellent effect.

A mussel starter ($10) exemplifies the kitchen’s perfectionism. It’s the same pot of yawning bivalves, with creamy sauce, that you can find all over the city, but these are marvellously plump and open wide, each shell contains a well-apportioned pool of sauce, and there’s not a single speck of grit. Even the receptacle for empties is the perfect size. With equal care, two small salt-cod fritters ($10) achieve a primal balance of crusty and creamy, with a tart caper aioli for lubrication and a cool celery-root slaw for contrast.

A few starters are more sharable than others. A radish platter ($8) arrays four colorful types of heirloom radishes on a white plate and leaves them to stand on their merits, which they do, with just a dab of oregano butter and salt for support. Some restaurants’ dolled-up sardines could take a lesson from the big, silvery ones served on crostini here ($8). They don’t try to be anything they’re not: They’re served simply with vinegared onions that offset the somewhat oily fishes’ rich flavor.

Occasional giggles sound around the cozy dining room from immature diners ordering pork butt ($9), which features in an almost entree-size “little dish.” Gentle roasting gives it a barbecue-like tenderness, with a chewy, sweetly browned surface. A bed of smoky, firm white beans adds just enough contrast to the bowl of meat.

What the menu calls Big Dishes, and what most people would call main courses, are even plainer: half a roast chicken ($16), a grilled steak ($17). A whole fish of the day – mine was striped bass ($21) – is grilled and served on the bone, with lemon and herbs stuffed inside, and its skin liberally oiled. Skate ($16) arrives lovingly curled on the plate around a heap of little green lentils, which almost outshine it for flavor. They have that creamy bite that lentils sometimes achieve, and they’re larded with hunks of smoky bacon. The skate, meanwhile, has a crispfried, salty crust and beautifully tender ribs.

A slow-cooked lamb shank ($20) has unbeatable falling-off-the-bone panache, similar to the pork butt’s but darker in tone. Olive-flavored spaetzle, one of the menu’s more outlandish touches, provides scintillating accompaniment. The spaetzle can be ordered as a $7 side as well. Confited in olive oil, a rabbit leg ($17) is almost too mild-flavored, though it’s strewn with fragrant lavender that calls to mind the fields through which it may have recently hopped.

Return visits pay off, as the repertoire changes slowly with the seasons. One night, pan-roasted oyster mushrooms ($9) are a recited special; the next, they’re fully instated on the printed menu. Casual but engaged service and a slightly cramped wood-finished dining room contribute to a comfortable illusion that you’re eating at the home of warm Brooklyn friends.

The simple aesthetic leaves desserts (all $6) feeling a little stripped-down. A short lemon cookie caps a delicious warm stew of fruit that’s fresh enough to satisfy with simplicity. But a plain slice of chocolate bundt cake leaves one pining, just a little, for a taste of something ornate.

The brief, affordable wine list tops out at $68 for a bottle of Les Terrasses Priorat, a dense grenache blend. Almost all the rest are less than $40, and many have a purity of flavor that complements the cleanness of the food. Perrin’s reserve Cotes de Rhone ($7/$26) has a meaty fullness, and a tingly, bone-dry muscadet ($8/$30) commends itself to the rotating roster of fresh oysters, tasting as keenly of the Loire as, say, the frilly Imperial Eagles ($2.50 each) do of cold Vancouver brine.

If the dishes that give the restaurant its name do turn out to be little, it’s only in their scope. Each one is marvelously focused and specialized, never overreaching what it’s best at and never boring with excess. A genuine small-plates format might sell more wine, but it could imperil the homey, unstilted atmosphere that makes Little Dishes more than the sum of its dishes.

Little Dishes, 434 Seventh Ave., between 14th and 15th streets, Park Slope, Brooklyn, 718-369-3144.