Tim Humphrey’s Ofena restaurant is a passion project if there ever was one, filled with meaningful touchstones from his life.

Located on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco’s Lakeside Village, the building sat empty for a dozen years before the the chef-owner and his business partner, Tan Truong of San Francisco’s Ju-Ni and Handroll Project, took it over.

Named after the town in Italy from where his great-grandparents hailed before immigrating to the United States, Ofena the restaurant just celebrated its first anniversary last month. When he was 30, Humphrey took his mom to that town. After she passed away, he found her travel journals about that trip. Now, her handwriting is immortalized in the lettering for “Ofena” on the menu, as well on the neon sign on the front of the restaurant.

When you get to the dessert menu, you’ll find an especially sweet tribute to another longtime friend of Humphrey’s, a server who worked at many of his previous restaurants who passed away from leukemia. More on that later.

It’s all characteristic of the warmth you’ll find at this restaurant, which was packed last Saturday night when I was invited in as a guest of Humphrey’s.

Lakeside Village is a walkable little neighborhood with ample street parking, some empty storefronts, and other businesses that look like they’ve been there forever. Humphrey was the executive chef at Goose & Gander in St. Helena and Perry Lang’s in Yountville, and the chef just under his brother Joseph Humphrey at the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena and Cavallo Point in San Francisco. As such, he brings years of talent and experience to inject new life into this sleepy area.

The spacious 95-seat restaurant features a bar area with seating, as well as a main dining room whose focal point is a mural of classic children’s toys, done by San Francisco artist Michael Brennan. It was already painted on the wall before Humphrey took the job, but it turned out to be kismet, given that Brennan had actually helped design features in several of the restaurants where Humphrey had worked.

Start the evening off with a Figurati ($16) that exudes lovely gentle floral notes from chamomile liqueur, melon, and chamomile-green tea simple syrup with milk-washed rum.

Humphrey drops off the perfect cocktail bite with it: house-pickled pepperonci stuffed with milky stracciatella, then draped with speck and finished with 12-year-aged balsamic. It’s porky, pickle-y, crunchy, and creamy, and everything you want in a first nosh.

Three pinsas or Italian flatbreads are available, including the Positano ($20), a slightly puffy oval crust strewn with mozzarella, garlic-ricotta, Calabrian chile, paper-thin slices of Meyer lemon, parsley, arugula leaves, and shaved Grana Padano. It is layer upon layer of flavor, from the tangy fermented taste of the crust to the sweet-briny shrimp, fruity-spicy chile, nutty cheese, and zing of the caramelized lemon.

One of Humphrey’s favorite dishes is the tender potato gnocchi ($33) done decadently carbonara-style with a creamy sauce that gets finished with a grating of “bottarga” of cured egg yolk for extra richness. This is no ordinary gnocchi, not when it gets topped with rich, meltingly tender shards of duck confit, as well as crispy pieces of its skin. My only regret is that my husband and I shared the dish, as I could have inhaled the entire thing by myself and been in pure heaven. So, I settled for half heaven, and the lingering thought that I’ll simply have to return for it again.

Yellowfin tuna ($41) is sliced, and showered with garlic, capers, shallots, Meyer lemon and browned butter like picatta. How clever to apply the technique usually used on pounded, breaded chicken or veal to meaty tuna instead. It’s an ideal combination to bring out the Mediterranean sea taste of the tuna.

To celebrate the restaurant’s anniversary last weekend, Humphrey offered a special of porchetta. Let’s hope he offers it more often, because it’s magnificent. A thick, glistening, herby slab arrives on the plate with an irresistible rim of juicy fat and crunchy, slightly chewy skin that’s like the best version of Chinese roast pork. There’s vibrant salsa verde on the side that helps cut the richness so that you can keep indulging in bite after bite.

To go with was a side of gigante beans ($9), creamy in texture, and wonderfully garlicky, that was fortified with sauteed escarole, plus a touch more of Calabrian chile, and fresh lemon.

Truong’s wife, Pastry Chef Cathleen Li, makes the restaurant’s desserts ($12 each). Her chocolate tiramisu is not traditional at all, but thoroughly satisfying nevertheless. Picture a slice of moist chocolate cake standing in for the usual ladyfingers, then covered dramatically with Mont Blanc-like squiggles of coffee cream, rum mousse, and vanilla mascarpone, and crunchy cookie crumbles. It’s a whopping taste of chocolate and coffee that you will surely finish with a big smile on your face.

“Jack’s panna cotta” arrives in a whimsical bowl with a story. It’s named for Humphrey’s late-friend Jack Louie, who would always order that creamy Italian dessert anytime he saw it on a menu. That was his standard for how good the place was. No doubt Jack would be plenty pleased with the one at Ofena.

It’s served in a playful bowl that sports a mischievous face on one side of it. It reminded Humphrey so much of Jack’s expression that he thought the bowls the most perfect vessel for this dessert.

Smooth and jiggly, and refreshing with a layer of lemon curd, plus mandarin segments, the panna cotta is sweetened with sugar cane syrup from Mt. Beasor Farm in Sopchoppy near the gulf coast of Florida that’s been owned by the Humphrey family for generations.

Because at this restaurant, it’s all about that personal connection.

Fortunately for diners, that connection is expected to widen even more, as Truong and Humphrey have taken over a corner building a few steps away for a second restaurant. The concept and name are still being finalized, but look for it to open in the coming months.