In bustling Aventura, the restaurant business has been booming with flashy and often expensive but basically mass-market entries.

Restaurateur and chef Mogens Moller saw an opportunity and seized it. His idea was to create a friendly bistro where sophisticated food would be served in an easy-going atmosphere. Moller gave his restaurant the motto “Eat, Drink, Enjoy” and that certainly sums up the look and feel of the large but comfortable establishment with a lovely (and, during Happy Hour, active) bar along one side.

Antique mirrors, beautiful hanging lamps and rich colors and textures all push toward a sophisticated dining experience. The windup is good, but the follow-through falters with poor dining-room management, well-intentioned but misguided service and an unfocused menu indifferently prepared.

How indifferent? Take Crisp South Beach Shrimp Cigars ($5.95), a starter that sounds intriguing but turns out to be a few chunks of shrimp with a huge helping of gloppy bread filler rolled in phyllo sheets and baked. Perhaps it was crispy coming out of the oven but not when it reached my plate one evening.

The portobello Napoleon ($7.95) is another promising concept that doesn’t work. A number of restaurants slice this hockey puck-sized mushroom cap to use as a layering ingredient, and it would retain some texture with, say, tomato and eggplant slices, but in Chef Moller’s conception, two slices are separated by a slippery filling of carrot puree, then glazed with onions and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The construction slides around the plate and, when finally tackled and cut, the flavors don’t really meld anyway.

In a similar vein, there is a grilled eggplant filled with ricotta cheese and spinach ($4.95), an under-flavored crab and shrimp cake ($7.95) doughy from too much filler, and fried mozzarella with a mildly spiced tomato sauce ($4.95). The dishes that work best are the simplest: beef carpaccio with arugula ($5.95), a caprese salad of tomato, mozzarella and basil ($5.95) and a crisp Caesar salad with a nice zing from a dollop of Dijon mustard ($4.50).

Main courses are hot, hot, hot. That’s not a compliment; Moller’s kitchen cranks out a stream of dishes served on pre-heated plates that are so hot they can’t be touched for five minutes. Servers, perhaps fearing a lawsuit, provide numerous cautions about the heat, but that’s not the diner’s real concern. The problem is that what was perhaps (one doesn’t know for sure) correctly cooked when it left the kitchen continues to bake on the plate, so a piece of salmon, by the time it can be eaten, is sinfully overdone. The salmon crusted with walnuts and honey ($17.95) has also melted, or the crust was only a sauce to start with; either way, it is a sticky mess with flavors that jar the senses.

A pan-seared salmon with spinach ($16.95) is a better bet, though still overcooked. Roast pork tenderloin ($15.95) should be ordered almost rare to turn out an edible medium. A straightforward, simply grilled filet mignon ($21.95) works well, and a sesame-coated tuna fillet ($17.95) gets an extra heating on the plate but retains some good flavors.

A half roast duck ($16.95) is wonderfully crisp and devoid of fat, but the meat is a little dry. The rack of lamb (market price) survives the hot plate treatment, but osso bucco (market price) does not; between a poorly trimmed veal shank laden with fat and gummy risotto, it’s just a gummy mess.

Servers blithely cope with this by drifting about, eager to take orders and slow to follow up once the food is delivered. In two experiences at Bistro Zinc, I never once had the server fill a wine glass after the first round was poured. Too bad, because Zinc has a small but decent wine list with fair prices. I never had a manager stop by to ask how things were going, either. On second thought, there may be a reason for that.

M.L. Warren is a pseudonym to protect our dining critic’s anonymity. Please phone in advance to confirm information on hours, prices, menu items and facilities.