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SO Restaurant-Bar, on Kavanaugh Boulevard toward the upper end of Little Rock's Hillcrest neighborhood, recently went through a change of ownership and personnel.

Joseph Salgueiro, the original chef when the establishment opened in 2006, has returned there as managing partner/owner and executive chef.

He has high goals, starting with an intent to raise the level of fine dining in the area, which he believes, since at least the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, has sadly sagged. He wants to elevate the restaurant's wine list and get it back on the Wine Spectator award-winning level it once enjoyed, to which end he has hired Jeff Yates as sommelier. Even more ambitiously, he's shooting for a James Beard Award or even a Michelin star.

So Salgueiro has taken some risks with his bold new menu, identifying his offerings as "American Nu Cuisine," with various international influences (including South American, European and Asian). The kitchen is making everything from scratch, right down to the specialty breads. Salgueiro has always excelled at plate presentation, and still does here.

We have been so hoping that the newly reconstituted SO would work out. So far, based on what we tried in our two visits, we'd have to say some of Salgueiro's risks pay off. Some don't. Others fall a bit short.

There's plenty of evidence that SO is a work progress -- Salgueiro and Yates are still working on wine and cocktail lists, for example, so ordering a glass of wine was a process of consultation between customer and wait staff and between wait staff and sommelier to come up with something satisfactory.

That wait staff, though consisting of folks who have worked in area dining establishments, is mostly new to SO, and thus not entirely familiar with the new menu. (Longtime bartender Veo Tyson, a favorite with regulars -- and judging from the folks who came in and sat at the bar, they are many -- is one of the few staff holdovers.)

Salgueiro and his staff have done a little bit of renovation, moving what had been two "wine walls" in the main dining area into what had been the front dining room. The back dining room, once a patio, has been named for restaurant founder Regina Ann "Jeannie" Smith, who died in 2017.

Otherwise, previous SO patrons won't notice much change in the decor. The restaurant has a sort of a shotgun narrowness, with seating at tables in the front room, mostly at banquettes in the main room and at tables in the spacious back room. The rock walls that survived the transition from the building's previous occupant, a pleasant brunch haven called The Living Room, remain. The kitchen is downstairs, making necessary a bit of exercise for wait staff and food runners. The capacious, fully stocked bar remains essentially unchanged.

Our first experience with the new menu was almost entirely successful. We started with an innovative and complementary amuse bouche (a smoked salmon cannoli dressed up with crisped capers to imitate chocolate chips and resting on an avocado mousse garnished with creme fraiche). We then steered around the few remnants of previous administrations -- the market-price raw oysters and seafood towers -- toward a couple of cold plates which were bragged about before the restaurant reopened:

The Peruvian-style Halibut Ceviche ($26), a larger-than-it-first-looked portion of less-than-bite-sized fish, marinated in Aji Amarillo (a Peruvian yellow chile pepper) and a lot of vinegar, pickled red onion, garnished with sweet coconut popcorn -- that, supposedly, is the way it's done in Peru -- and cilantro oil, all served in a steep-sided glass bowl perched over a flask of ice. This is something we'd certainly go back for.

Spanish Octopus ($24), grilled, rubbed with chile lime and served over avocado mousse (see the amuse bouche), plated with citrus creme fraiche, pickled cipolollini onions, rolled cucumber slices and smoked red trout caviar. The octopus was quite, and surprisingly, very tender and had a bit of a smoky flavor. The side onions were a particular hit.

We had enough room left over for dessert. Salgueiro has kept on the menu the restaurant's signature Chocolate Sack (but at a whopping $25), in a somewhat altered fashion -- it's now more horizontal than we remember, and the rich-dark-chocolate shell is now filled with whipped cream, berries and a drizzle of chocolate syrup, surrounded by more berries and a "moat" of slightly singed marshmallow. It used to be decadent; now it's positively sinful.

Not quite as successful: the dessert-special sweet potato cake ($16), topped with a house-baked cookie and a dollop of vanilla ice cream, with plated dark-purple fig jam and bright-pink raspberry puree.

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We wish our second visit had worked out so well. It didn't, quite.

We opted to start with the soup du jour, an Australian rock lobster bisque -- priced a bit shockingly at $25, though it (sort of) served two (we had them split it into two bowls for full-table sampling). It was quite rich and had a surprisingly large amount of actual small lobster chunks (perhaps justifying the cost -- the seafood entree area of the menu offers a whole vanilla-pouched, sous vide Australian rock lobster for $47). It also held another surprise: a touch of cinnamon (along with a dash of cayenne pepper) that we remarked upon but couldn't quite identify until we had our server quiz the chef.

Our appetizer Shrimp Dumplings ($18, sufficient to serve two) looked more attractive on the menu and on the plate than it turned out to be. The shells were slightly tough and chewy and we couldn't quite identify the ground filling as shrimp. The elaborate topping, of julienne onions, peppers, jalapeño fried garlic crispy shallots and cilantro, all on a bed of sweet chile soy sauce, was simply overwhelming. And, in our estimation, it detracted rather than added to the dish -- or rather, it added altogether too much.

(We were tempted by an appetizer special but didn't try it: a dressed-up concoction of foie gras, on the menu along with the side dishes at $32. We didn't inquire as to the appetizer's cost, but if it exceeded that, it certainly would have exceeded our budget.)

Both our entrees fell short of their potential. The weekend special, a good-sized chunk of pan-seared halibut ($55, and perhaps an object lesson in asking the price of a special before ordering it) was a hair on the dry side, not critically, but enough to notice, and overly salty. The accompanying pumpkin-spiced butternut squash-crab meat hash lacked zest; Cosmopolitan Companion correctly observed it could have used a touch of citrus -- perhaps we should have been dipping the hash into the lemon-zested herb oil on the plate. The fried sage garnish had little if any flavor.

To do the dish justice, Companion reports encouragingly, however, that "it tasted good at 3 a.m. cold when I woke up very hungry. Actually much better cold than hot."

Pastrami is supposed to be salty, but the house-made duck pastrami at the top of the Duck Cassoulette ($35 and another Salgueiro brag-on) was likewise too salty, which unfortunately took away from the rest of the dish -- a large quantity of firm flageolet beans and chunks of presumably house-made garlic sausage in varying sizes.

Speaking of dishes Salgueiro bragged on, we were puzzled by the location of one item under the "Game" menu (along with venison, actual game): the Buttered Chicken ($25), an Indian-style dish marinated in a spiced yogurt-curry tomato cream sauce with Basmati lemon rice, fresh cilantro and garlic naan. (How that qualifies as "game," unless somebody had to go out and hunt the chicken, we do not know.)

Bread at SO, by the way, isn't complementary; the restaurant charges $12 for "bread service," which includes, per person, one round challah roll, one slice of focaccia and one slice of olive bread. The olive bread was a hit; the focaccia was ordinary; the roll was a little on the chewy side and, even for the party member who doesn't normally butter his bread, the small tub of house butter was a help.

Service couldn't have been better or friendlier.

Here's hoping things settle down soon at SO and that the rough spots ease out. And here's hoping Salgueiro achieves his goals: That Wine Spectator listing, a James Beard Award and/or a Michelin star would certainly elevate this town's culinary standing.

SO Restaurant-Bar

Address: 3610 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock

Hours: 5-9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday, 5-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday

Cuisine: "American Nu Cuisine," with international (including South American, European and Asian) influences

Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D

Alcoholic beverages: Full bar; wine and cocktail list pending

Wheelchair access: Yes

Info: (501) 663-1464; facebook.com/SORestaurantBar/