There are plenty of unpleasant surprises in this business, but sometimes there are happy surprises as well. The early reports I heard from friends about Ilili condemned the upscale Lebanese restaurant for miserably poor service and indifferent cooking. That was all too believable of an oversized new restaurant in dark lower Midtown with a DJ, serving a mix of familiar Middle Eastern dishes and creative updates of Lebanese cuisine. So it seemed at first like a fluke, then like a very nice surprise, when the cooking turned out to be not just adequate but quite superior.

With its prices averaging around $17 and reaching $40 and $50, a failure to realize that the long menu consists entirely of “small plates,” of which it’s recommended that each diner order two or three, is understandable. The staff, about whom I had heard such scalding tales, make strenuous efforts to up-sell the pricier food and drink, but apart from that they were friendly, responsible, and seemed soundly on the side of the customer.

Often, when a foreign cuisine is dressed up and served on nice plates at high prices, the result is a watering down of the native flavor. Chef Philippe Massoud, who comes to us from the acclaimed Mediterranean grill, Neyla, in Washington, D.C., avoids that trap. The menu leads off with dishes everyone’s heard of, competent but mundane versions of falafel, hummus, tabouli, but it swiftly moves along to items of greater interest. Skewered lamb kebabs (two for $17), juicy with marinade and smoky from the charcoal grill, couldn’t be better: If the food at Ilili never got more creative than this, its future would be just as assured. But the less-familiar dishes are at least as good.

A pair of duck shawarmas ($14) are served in a rack of Lucite cones, as good a way as any. Wrapped in tortilla-like flatbreads, the rich shreds of duck meat are enlivened with sweet pomegranate and fig. Each shawarma is only a couple of mouthfuls, but they’re fantastically good and delicate, bearing little resemblance to the sauce-slathered street-fare version. There’s not much cultural authenticity in a bowl of fried Brussels sprouts with grapes ($12), and it’s hard to care; it’s enough that it exists here. The juicy sprouts are fried until their outer leaves are crisp and brown; while the pieces of green grape bring out the sprouts’ sweet freshness, a dark fig purée and hunks of walnut accentuate their earthy undertones. It’s a masterful combination that deliciously shows off the vegetable’s versatility.

There’s something a little ridiculous about the idea of turning kofte, the unassuming meatball of the Middle East, into a luxury item, but when Ilili doctors its beef kofte with foie gras ($24 for a single short skewer), nobody’s sneering. The result, fine-ground meat studded with hunks of melting liver, is so crumbly and lush it can barely stay on the fork: The fat from the foie gras melds into the meat to give it an unearthly, unsubtle richness. The waiter pressured us to order more than the one skewer, but any more would have been much too much.

Rich kashkaval cheese is melted in a cast-iron casserole and topped with a runny, full-flavored duck egg with a dab of black truffle ($12), another embarrassment of richness that’s hard to leave alone until the casserole’s empty save for a few gleams of fat and yolk. Manti, Lebanese meat-filled dumplings ($14), are impressive if only for the labor that must have gone into shaping and stuffing the dozens of flawless, bean-size pasta pillows. The refreshing sauce of yogurt and mint offsets the spiced meat excellently.

The fancier desserts are disappointing. “Cloud 9” ($12), for one, is a flavorless soft brick made from sahalab starch and shrouded in foam, accompanied by good coffee ice cream. A warm chocolate cake ($12) is tasty but ordinary. Considerably better is the essmalieh ($12), a sandwich of shredded filo dough filled with sweet cream cheese achta and surrounded with a wonderful syrup flavored with rose and orange blossoms.

Keeping one’s expectations low sometimes pays off, and eating at Ilili was one of those occasions, with food that’s far, far better than it needs to be. One minor note: The entrance to the wood-paneled restaurant is surrounded by deceptive floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Twice I almost walked into one; be careful.

Ilili (236 Fifth Ave., between 27th and 28th Streets, 212-683-2929).