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Now as ever, the outer boroughs’ courtly Italian and “Continental” restaurants beckon trend-weary diners. Many of these red-sauce palazzos threw in the dish towel long ago, exhausting both their ossified reputations and New Yorkers’ nostalgia for local color. Others remain dependably good, with earnest cooking and personal service. Slinging the scaloppine since 1983, Uncle Peter’s refuses to coast on Jackson Heights’ gentrification buzz, although—like its surrounding historic-district co-ops—it intrigues discerning Manhattanites. Uncle Peter, a raffishly ponytailed gent actually named Ernesto, works the brick-walled dining room, dispensing holas and hellos as he recommends dishes and drinks. He’s Italian via Argentina, where, he says, “The official religions are steak, wine, ravioli, tango, and psychoanalysis.” You can find everything but the shrink at his proud little restaurant. Supple pastas are housemade, with imaginative fillings and sauces; the wine list features recherché Malbecs from the Mendoza region’s old vines; fish and seafood are sparkling fresh and simply sauced with garden tomatoes and basil; and buttery steaks, sourced from New Zealand, require only a drizzle of garlic-parsley chimichurri salsa. And tango? As the hours advance and the soundtrack morphs from pop to Latin, Carlos Santana shares airtime with Buenos Aires’s sainted tanguero crooner Carlos Gardel. — Karen Tina Harrison

On any given night, Uncle Peter’s tables mix Spanish-speaking and Anglo diners: fathers and sons talking family business; besotted young lovers and old marrieds; and multigenerational clans ordering family style, with strollers and walkers tucked against the wall.

Seafood salad, $11.95; fresh mozzarella balsamic, $8.95; Atlantic salmon Mediterranean, $18.95; gaucho-style sirloin, $24.95