It takes courage to open a restaurant in a space you haven’t finished remodeling yet, a confidence that your food will win over a clientele even after they’ve been put off by loose hanging wires, unpainted plaster, and queasily sloping, crater-pocked floors. The two owners of Seymour Burton have that courage, and it seems well-founded: Their East Village restaurant has been operating in what looks like a construction site for a few months, and it even has a coterie of regulars.

A long communal table bisects the loud room, dividing the good seats (those with a clear panoramic view of the wall-length chalkboard menu) from the bad seats (those whose occupants have to crane their necks or stand up to see the board). The tablecloths are Kraft paper, the napkins are bar towels, and the effect, practically ostentatious in its lack of ostentation, is of a deliberate throwback to Bohemian East Village days. All of the varied dozen or so wines can be had by the glass or bottle; there are also Belgian-style New York State beers and $3 cans of Porkslap Ale. The food stretches along a similar range of easy treats: a $12 burger, a $26 piece of bass. To start, a shareable, large heap of top neck clams ($8) is fried in a fluffy, light batter and served with a heavy, creamy remoulade, a taste of New England. Or, closer to home, there’s a hefty, inch-thick latke ($15), fried dark brown and greasy and topped with slabs of smoked salmon and crème fraîche. Before too long, the kitchen’s simple strategy for winning over customers becomes clear: richness. In all, I counted nine occurrences of the word “fry,” in its various conjugations, on the menu.

Non-fried starters include a dense and creamy oyster chowder ($9) and a dullish pâté of chicken and duck livers, spread thickly across three large pieces of toast ($9) and topped with fried (whoops!) shallots. There’s a smart pairing, too, of excellent, cool oysters on the half shell with seared patties of mild breakfast sausage ($12), a big, appealing plateful that doesn’t leave the eater as weighed down as most of the other choices.

The whole brook trout ($21) is the only main course here that I’d really go out of my way to eat again. The fresh fish’s skin is charred on the grill, leaving an intact, crisp, and exquisitely savory shell around the pale yellow, meaty flesh of the trout, which is stuffed with herbs and lemon but mostly left to its own delicious devices. The pork shoulder ($18) is braised and shredded into fatty, gamy sinews with bits of browned crunch on the outside, a giant pile of not terribly flavorful meat heaped on creamy soft polenta.

In some ways it’s very much like eating at the partially renovated home of a well-meaning friend. The cannellini beans under a $26 bass filet were woefully undercooked, not just al dente but with a chalky, splintery crunch to them, but the fish was moist and fresh, with juicy little clams for company and deeply seasoned with saffron and a little too much salt.

A modest-size lamb shank ($19) gets an atypically light treatment, cooked on the bone till tender and afloat in a mild broth with carrot and celery chunks and toothsome, properly cooked gigante beans. One doesn’t often associate the words “refreshing” and “lamb,” but at Seymour Burton, anything’s possible. I made good use of the salt cellar on the table.

Desserts are basic, comforting, and made in-house. Think chocolate pudding ($6) — plain and dense, faintly salty, and served in a big goblet covered in whipped cream. The kitchen makes some fine liquory ice creams ($6 for three scoops): mellow rum raisin and a rich, custardy chocolate one spiked with sweet bourbon. Bourbon and raisins meet again in a bread pudding ($6), and intense, almost bitter caramel ice cream covers a bland apple pie ($7).

Despite — or even because of — the occasional shortcomings of the food, it’s hard not to admire the little restaurant’s pluckiness, frying up heaping portions of comfort food in a tilted, unfinished kitchen. That’s doubtless part of the appeal for the crowds that fill the tables every night. At this rate, it shouldn’t be too long before the contractors get paid and finish the remodeling. But it’s unimaginable that, even in a polished setting, that homespun feel, so intrinsic to the restaurant, will be lost.

Seymour Burton (511 E. 5th St., between avenues A and B, 212-260-1333).