Michael Psilakis is one to watch. His Upper West Side Greek restaurant, Onera, made a quiet splash, and impressed my frequent dining companion enough to lure her twice above her usual cutoff of 14th Street. She gladly made the trek again when he opened a new Midtown restaurant this spring.

At Dona, the new spot, Mr. Psilakis’s excitingly tricky Greek-Italian meld is somewhat hobbled by Donatella Arpaia’s baroque management. From the oh-so-classy gold sign out front reading “proper attire required,” to the white-bricked, gazebo-esque space and the slick but too-present service, the environment is beautifully orchestrated but far from unobtrusive. Despite the staff’s informed congeniality, it becomes exhausting to have to interrupt your conversation every few minutes for briefings and debriefings about the food. Servers elaborately describe each dish – sometimes twice; sometimes, awkwardly, a couple of moments after you’ve started eating it. Even before the first course arrives, a typical table has undergone the personal introduction of three breads and two butters, with accompanying rarefied salts, not to mention three changes of flatware.

But the food gleams through it all. Mr. Psilakis’s way of throwing ingredients together is guided more by instinct than any recognizable tradition – marlin with mozzarella? – but his instinct is masterful. The dinner menu comprises four sections: raw fish starters, cooked starters, pastas, and proteins. A $65 prix-fixe includes one of each, which is a deal, especially considering that a normal human won’t have room afterward to splurge on dessert. Although the chef’s island of origin is Long Island, he nonetheless has a Greek knack with seafood, as exemplified in a pretty composition ($16) of half-shell oysters accented with ginger and grapefruit, and a blob of sea urchin to which layers of burrata cheese and fava-bean puree pose an earthy foil. (That this small appetizer occupies a total of seven plates is the last thing I’ll mention about the overblown service.)

The restaurant’s paella appetizer ($15) seems almost conventional, with the de rigueur plump clams, mussels, and head-on shrimp, spicy merguez, and slippery orzo in lieu of rice – until the server pours unctuous saffrony fish broth over it, turning the dish into a soup.

Purses and pouches are a specialty: The motif of a delicious secret payload seems to suit the chef’s aesthetic. So he fills thin-walled tortelli ($19) with luxurious butternut-squash puree, complementing the rich-named vegetable with brown butter and cinnamon-spiced roasted nuts. A single round raviolo, part of a lobster tasting menu, oozes truffly poached yolk when you cut in; inside is a buttery lobster-ricotta mixture. And the gooey chestnut filling of mezzaluna ($22) plays woodsily off the dumplings’ topping of savory duck confit, neither Greek nor Italian but amazingly good.

Even pork loin ($26) gets rolled around a filling: salty candied orange rind, and fennel strips with a bit of crunch that offsets the transgressively rare pork’s supple subtlety. The loin rests on a pale piece of pork belly, which bathes in luxurious pork-belly broth heavily spiked with saffron pistils. The restaurant serves lamb ($34) two ways too: mild loin rare and sliced, laid on top of a warm salad of farro, bitter cooked greens, and earthy boiled lamb pieces, with avgolemono foam. Marlin steaks ($28), an unusual sight on a New York table, steep in fennel jus enlivened by vintage sherry vinegar. The firm, flavorful fish has a dusting of the same rind that flavors the pork, and a bed of stewed fennel.

Unlike the savory courses, which thrive on contrast and surprise, Nancy Olson’s desserts pick a flavor and stick to it. The best might be a simple but exquisite lemon souffle ($12), hot, fluffy, and redolent, although the zucchini chocolate cake ($10), super-moist and not particularly vegetable-flavored, competes nobly. Clever, mutually complementary petit fours more than satiate diners who skip dessert.

One of the many joys of Onera, Mr. Psilakis’s West Side restaurant, is its abundance of interesting and affordable Greek wines. Dona’s list extends to 300 bottles, but only some 20 are Greek. Options by the glass run between $8 and $20 and include a complex Vassiliou retsina ($8), Domaine Sigalas’s acidic white assyrtiko ($14), and a 1998 edition of Terra Rossa’s concentrated, impressive brunello di Montalcino ($20). A few house cocktails embrace the esoteric spirit of the cooking, like one made with grapefruit juice and the hard-to-find bitter orange aperitif Aperol ($14), and martinis ($14) whose olives are stuffed with a choice of savory cheeses.

The setting doesn’t do the food any favors, but, as much as one might pine for an environment that’s less a showpiece and more a showcase, this food doesn’t really need favors. It’s vivid enough to grab one’s attention despite the fussy distractions, and profound enough to keep it, long after the meal ends.

Dona, 208 E. 52nd Street at Third Avenue, 212-308-0830.