Who can say that my views on food, wine and local dining are any better than the next guy or that my point of view is anything more than personal edification? I put forward these thoughts even to myself when others may skirt the issue altogether.

Perhaps I’m really broaching a cautious topic of Portland restaurants that fail miserably. When that happens they go on my list of restaurants that I vow Never to Go to Again. Fortunately it’s a short list. Unfortunately I have a new candidate.

Espo’s, off outer Congress St, is the latest to earn this dubious honor. While it may personify cheap eats to the core, this in itself is not a bad thing. I find nothing wrong with family style dining that’s a mainstay of classic marinara-mozzarella concoctions posing as Italian-American comfort grub. Yet must moderately priced food always be a tasteless joy?

I honestly would prefer to sleep for one hundred years than to return to Espo’s. I may comprise a lonely minority where that’s concerned. When I was there last night the place was still pretty darn full at the shank of the dinner hour.

Its predecessor, Esposito’s--owned by the incumbents of Casa Novello fame, which I love for its honest, hearty approach as a solid stronghold of Americanized Italian fare—was extraordinary compared to this featureless reincarnation. At least it bore no supercilious pretensions. Esposito’s cooed as a quirky time-warp, with its red-checked tablecloths, ancient waitresses and red sauce so good it should have been sold in jars by the front door.

When it was reborn as Espo’s, under new ownership by an offspring of the Casa Novello clan, the old recipes obviously weren’t part of the deal.

It garnered much hype when it opened, being hailed as the chic new dining spot along Outer Congress St. I thought the old place had great appeal. The makeover, which included a sea of tables with black tablecloths and other questionable bibelots, struck me as merely misguided interior decoration. It might have worked in a starkly modern room. But this ersatz collection of reproduction fixtures, blond wood and black table tops was nothing more than the culmination of bad taste.

How it earned such accolades so summarily only shows that some pundits are penumbral trolls with less discernment of taste than a can of spam.

I went when it re-opened, like a fool with crossed eyes. I found the new décor as inappropriate as gravel on a dance floor. I think the idea was to make a firm favorite seem trendy and contemporary--updated, as they say in the trade.

Why I went back there last night is beyond my deepest introspection. It’s not that I was expecting a molecular experience of cutting-edge cuisine. Rather, I was in the mood for a plate of pasta or something gooey and filling like eggplant or veal parmigiana. I was too lazy to drive the extra few miles to the estimable Casa Novello.

We were shown to a nice large square table in the corner. Fortunately I had my reading glasses. The lighting was so dim only a telescope could have helped this far-sighted diner read either the menu or the specials board. A throw of darts might have worked just as well.

As it turned out our little corner table was there for the winter. It’s in front of a door that leads to an outdoor dining patio and in a part of the dining room devoid of any illumination whatsoever. The result was to subject the hapless diner to look across to a moodily lit room from a vantage point of near darkness. Oh, well, I suppose atmospheric lighting, to quote a dim phrase, is in the eye of the beholder.

When our waitress took our drinks order— diet cokes for two—I solicited her opinion on the lighting question. She sort of shrugged and said, “Oh, yeah, it is pretty dark here.”

And to think, had it been a balmy summer’s eve, we could have dined al fresco on the patio to the nocturnal chirping of cars whooshing down Congress St.

In any case we managed to order dinner. The menu replicates standard fifth generation Italian-American dishes— the usual pastas with the usual sauces, and the usual veal, chicken, fish and parmigiana dishes. The pizzas, though, that I saw coming out looked pretty good.

I chose one of the specials. And as soon as I did I knew I made a colossal mistake. For an instant, the concept of baked haddock parmigiana sounded exotic and worth a try. Little did I know that I threw myself into a maelstrom of culinary mastication. The notion of haddock baked under a blanket of marinara and mozzarella sounded truly awful.

My companion chose spaghetti and meatballs, which, given the surroundings, was highly appropriate.

These Italian-American hash houses—and some can be quite good—are no different than Cantonese-style Chinese restaurants of the 1950s and 60s, before the words Szechwan or Mandarin ever entered our gastronomic lexicon.

We were not in Tuscany, nor did I expect to be.

Salad comes with the entrees, which was no surprise. . And out came the usual mess of desiccated iceberg with a sinewy slew of old-refrigerator-scented cukes, red onions and other stuff hiding under a clump of our choice of blue-cheese dressing..

A wedge of iceberg is all the salad rage these days in upstanding trendy eateries. And I’m no snob when it comes to good quality iceberg, topped with well made blue-veined cheese dressing.

In short order our entrees arrived, though I might add our salad plates, pushed aside, were never taken away.

The meat balls and spaghetti were a revelation. It’s a dish that defies size. In a bowl with the dimensions of a platter was a mound of spaghetti topped with two gargantuan meat balls looking like concomitant meatloaves.

There was something nearly obscene about the dish. Catering to the appetites of hearty diners is one thing. But this portion was obscene.

My haddock, on the other hand, was everything I expected. It, too, came in a giant oven-proof platter. The fish was swimming in some sort of watery red sauce, as though a malfunctioning dishwasher had spewed the rinse water into the dish. It was topped with a messy goop of melted mozzarella and tomato sauce, looking like the dregs from a garbage disposal.

Thankfully I hadn’t stuffed myself on bread, which wasn’t bad and came with decent olive oil mixed with seasonings and grated cheese. But I certainly wasn’t going to spend much time eating my dinner. The fish was tasteless and the red liquid was insipid. The best part of dinner was the three refills of diet Coke.

The meat balls, by the way, were fairly tasty and well spiced, though we could have played a game of catch with them if things really got tense.

Perhaps I had the one lone-star failure of this popular eatery. Whatever the case, it wasn’t good by any standards.

When we finished our waitress asked if we wanted to box up our leftovers. Everyone in the room left with one of those Styrofoam compartmentalized containers filled with table scraps. And it’s not hard to figure out why. The portions are beyond enormous.

We did box up the food, if only to be polite, I guess, and I said, “It seems like everyone leaves with a care package because the portions are so large. She responded, “That’s the idea.”

It’s a bad idea. And my only regret was that garbage day in my neighborhood was yesterday and that Styrofoam container will have to stay in the bin until next week.

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