A family restaurant carries on

While they still have a Raffael’s Walpole banquet facility, the Greenside Grille is now the Riccis’ only restaurant; they closed Raffael’s in Hull last month.

And, while the Riccis are running the Grille with the same hands-on, family pride that gave us the once-dazzling Raffael’s atop Quincy’s State Street Bank, Elio and Frank have changed the name so former customers won’t expect the same menu they knew at Raffael’s.

Not quite knowing what to expect from the place (Was it a Raffael’s? Was it a country club?) we ventured up the long driveway to the restaurant one Friday night late last month.

The simple dark-green space — surrounded with windows and punctuated by striking amber hanging lamps — was half-full. The crowd was decidedly older and lively as we settled into a comfortable table overlooking a vast green expanse, while a piano player sang a jazzy rendition of “White Christmas.’’

Two spoonfuls into the clam chowder ($4 cup, $6 bowl) and I was quite hopeful that the food would be good. The soup of the day ($3 cup, $5 bowl), a brothy turkey vegetable, was tasty, too, and a nice option for soup lovers not wanting a rich bowl.

One bite of the angel hair pomodoro ($10 lunch, $15 dinner) that arrived next, and I was confident that someone cared in the kitchen. (That someone, it turns out, is chef Michael Saef, who has worked at various Raffael’s for years.)

The thin pasta was al dente and so steamy we had to blow on it. The simple red sauce was bright and hearty at once, with some chunks of fresh tomato and a telling residue of olive oil on the bottom of the plate. For me, it was as good as a pomodoro sauce gets. (I don’t like the Parmesan served at the Grille, however; it’s thick grated and hard, which obscures its flavor. It is telling, though, that I didn’t even miss it — the sauce was so good.)