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DEVELOPING A RESTAURANT concept is one of the most challenging endeavors a young chef faces. I mean, you've found the money, and now what — exactly — are you going to do with it?

JENNI GIRTMAN/AJC STAFF (ENLARGE)
JENNI GIRTMAN/AJC STAFF (ENLARGE)
The veranda is a nice place to sit and sip a glass of wine. But leave the milk carton and cafeteria tray inside.
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SALT 794 Juniper St., Midtown. Overall rating: FAIR Food: Southern comfort with modern updates, and a nod to the blue plate specials of the American diner and the lunch room cafeteria, too. Service: Eager and enthusiastic, but hardly versed in all things gastronomical. When busy, the staff can be slow moving, and sometimes there are long lulls between courses. But servers are always polite and happy to help, even if they can't pronounce "Viognier." Setting: The modern space that was Cavu has been remodeled to its former Victorian veneer. The veranda is a lovely place to sip wine; the plush dining area upstairs is low lit and sexy. Address, telephone: 794 Juniper St., Midtown. 404-541-1988 Hours: 4:30-11 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 4:30 p.m.-midnight Fridays-Saturdays; closed Sundays Price range: Soups, salads and starters $3-$12.90; "supper" menu $8.40-$21.90; sides such as grits and collards $4; desserts $7 Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express Best dishes: Shake 'N Bake pork chop with chopped apples and wild rice, comfort salad of spinach and arugula Full bar or wine/beer: Yes. The wine list has some well-rounded selections, especially for its size, but the restaurant does not always have the wines in stock. Reservations: Accepted Vegetarian selections: Kitchen salad with tomatoes, cucumber and mozzarella, three-decker PB&J, farmer's ear of corn on the cob with parmesan cheese, grilled cheese panini Children: Fine, but better to come early before the bar crowd gets settled in Parking: Valet parking or on street Wheelchair access: Yes, but inside dining area is upstairs Smoking: On the patio and in the lounge area Noise level: Medium to high Patio: A wrap-around porch with plenty of seating Takeout: Yes OUR STAR RATING SYSTEM Outstanding. Sets the standard for fine dining in the region. Excellent. One of the best in the Atlanta area. Very good. Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining. Good. A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss. Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated Fair or Poor.

Everything from the menu to the maitre d' derives from this one, seemingly simple plan.

For Jason Dauble, the chef-owner of Salt, the idea is simple enough: a Southern restaurant "with a twist." The "twist" is apparently Dauble's updated interpretation of Southern meat-and-three-type dishes that also includes ootsey-cutesy versions of American lunchtime lodestones such as peanut butter and jelly, precious mini-cheeseburgers and chicken-fried steak served on a cafeteria tray, complete with a carton of milk.

Dauble must have listened just a little too diligently in marketing class, because his menu has more hooks than a chartered fishing boat. And what often looks really great on paper just can't hack it in reality.

Let's take that cafeteria tray, for example. Nevermind that the pan-fried steak, a blue plate special for the evening, has the flavor and texture of something from a grocery store's frozen food section. Nevermind that the mashed potatoes taste as if they came from a box. What really gets me going is the milk. It goes so well with my sauvignon blanc. Can we just skip this too-cute step and donate the cartons to a local school?

Frankly, it feels to me like the whole kitschy concept is just a clever way for Salt to try to gain a fast ride to the 15-minutes-of-fame galleria. And it's working: I've never seen the restaurant uncrowded, especially on weekend nights.

Dauble originally dabbled in interior design at Georgia Southern University before graduating from the School of Culinary Arts at the Art Institute of Atlanta.

His eye for design has given this spot, where Cavu was, an alluringly sexy appeal. There's a veranda for dining that wraps halfway around this handsome Victorian's exterior, where funky, Halloween-ish chandeliers of fake black and gold jewels droop over each table. Inside, the downstairs area sports a comfortable, inviting bar that proves a magnet for the up-and-coming singles set (you know, the folks we used to call yuppies).

Upstairs, the main dining area is drenched in lush red upholsteries, dark woods and lots of forgiving low light. Because it's such a grand old house, Salt's atmosphere — inside and out — feels almost like Bourbon Street.

It's more than pleasant to sit outside, sip a glass of wine (sans milk) and watch the world go by.

And if that's all I had come to do, I would not have walked away disappointed. But dish after dish, from a fried calamari overwhelmed with a salty, overpoweringly sweet Asian barbecue sauce to an altogether depressing chicken pot pie laden with a heavy slice of puff pastry, I was disappointed.

The overall problem with the food at Salt lies in two basic principles of good cooking: fresh, honest ingredients and balance of flavor. There is no soul in Dauble's soul food — no rich layering of flavors, no equilibrium of power between sweet and salty, no time-honored manner of making it all come back to life on the table.

The truth is, the food here lacks integrity.

An ear of corn, drenched in yummy butter and sprinkled with sea salt and tangy Parmesan, proves my point. It's a great dish, a Mexican street food eaten directly off the cob. It's beautiful, too, served with the husk tied and just a slight charring of the corn niblets.

But it is the corn that is the essence of this dish, not the bells and whistles that go with it. And Salt's corn tastes as if it came from the freezer case, not the farmers' market. It's August. Do the food math.

OK, there are a few winners here. All is not lost. Tiny hand-pies of salty ham and gooey cheese are wrapped in a soft, doughy pretzel-like crust replete with sprinkled salt and served, honestly and without shame, with nothing more than yellow mustard. (In a recent phone conversation, Dauble told me that he, unfortunately, will be taking these off the menu because they came from the kitchen consistently inconsistent.)

And a salad of nothing more than iceberg and romaine lettuces, sliced into a clever chiffonade and tossed with tomatoes, cucumbers and shredded mozzarella, is the perfect pairing with plain old blue cheese or peppery ranch dressing. Arugula and spinach, while not consistently so, is a well-balanced melange of the fragrant greens with crunchy Fuji apples, meaty walnuts, tart gorgonzola and just enough bacon vinaigrette to make things a little messy. A "Shake 'N Bake" pork chop is sumptuous and juicy, paired well with chopped apples and seasoned wild rice.

With these dishes, Dauble seems to get out of his own way and allow the food to speak for itself.

With others, there are windows of greatness, but something always seems to go amiss: Collard greens mixed with black beans and rice are the perfect blend of savory soulfulness, but the corn meal-battered catfish they accompany is downright pedestrian, with the subtleties of the fish overpowered by a sweet crust and an even sweeter orange-scented cream sauce. Desserts have problems of their own. The cobblers are runny inside, not sweet enough and share far too little crust. The bread pudding, a cloyingly sweet concoction of chocolate and cherries, has a chalky tasting white chocolate sauce. The served-with-syrup French toast is actually pretty darned tasty, with big Texas-toast-sized bread slices all crispy and toasty on the outside and fluffy white inside. But can I please have it for breakfast instead of dessert?

Oh, I can hear the railing of the pundits now. Who wouldn't want to eat a three-decker PB&J? Mini-cheeseburgers are, after all, tres soigne. Where is my imagination? Where is my sense of fun? Can't I see that's what Salt is all about?

Honestly, I can. And I do.

It's just that I also believe that good food — fresh and local if possible — should be the focal point of any restaurant, no matter what the catch. Salt's kitchen would do well to remember that.