By all appearances, Crave , which opened last week at 57 E. Market St., Akron, looks to be one of the areas's more popular dining and drinking spots. Owners and co-head chefs DeAnna Akers and Aaron Hervey put together a smart, comfortable dinning room and bar area, among the most value-oriented wine lists in the state and an innovative menu on which all but a few items can be had for $7 to $19. Besides all that, the food - sometimes a little daring, nearly always satisfying - is first-rate.

People wonder why so many restaurants fail. Mostly it has to do with inexperienced ownership. Other causes include an uncomfortable atmosphere, overpriced wine and cocktails, boring menus that never change and high prices. The high prices can last a while, but in this town they seem to wear thin quickly.

Crave avoids all of these pitfalls.

You know dining will be different here, possibly exciting, before you make your way through the appetizers. They run the gamut from cumin- and curry-dusted fried pickle chips with caramelized onion rita ($6) and grilled portobello mushroom layered in a short stack of wild rice pancakes with vanilla chive butter and a lavender butterscotch sauce ($7) to buttermilk-dipped fried green tomatoes with tomatillo salsa and crab meat ($4) and chargrilled Guinness and garlic-glazed steak skewers with smoked Gouda fondue ($8).

We tried the pickles, which were different and fun with their exotic flavor from the Indian spices. The wild-rice pancakes, a dish Hervey first began serving in his days as executive chef at The Inn at Turner's Mill in Hudson, is really a simple dish with a fanciful array of flavors. The fried peppers and calamari were standard fare.

If you order a salad here, plan on sharing it with someone at the table if you also are planning on an entrée. The salads are huge. The Caesar ($7), with fried anchovies and truffled croutons, was perfectly dressed. The flavors were fresh, a littler spicy and with a creamy texture, and those fried little fish were a very nice touch. The grilled Granny Smith apples with candied walnuts, blue cheese and baby greens ($7) were crisp with that classic blend of flavors - sharp and creamy blue cheese blended with sweet-tart apple and nutty walnuts. The only quibble was the grilled apple slices were a bit too thick.

Dinners were a terrific value. I could eat the huge bowl of smoked Gouda macaroni with blackened chicken and roasted garlic butter ($12) daily. Rich and creamy with a jolt from the spicy chicken and its lingering heat made for a nice counterbalance from creamy rich flavor to hot and spicy. Lamb shank with porcini risotto and kalamata olive demiglace ($17) is a rich and decadent dish. The tender lamb fell off the bone, and though the risotto was slightly gummy on one side, blending the sauce into it corrected it quickly.

The day after dinning at Crave, my wife was still swooning over the rum and vanilla glazed halibut over mashed plantains with mango jalapeno salsa ($19). Fortunately, she brought home her leftovers and said they were as good as the night before. And those mashed plantains, she said, were better than any mashed potatoes she'd ever had.