Springs Orleans is everything its predecessor on Tejon Street, Il Postino, was not. It’s lively. It’s fun. And — here’s a concept for a restaurant — the food tastes good.

The grand and gently dim dining room is packed with people, the chatter mixing seamlessly with piano jazz. Servers whisk by with dishes of shrimp or chicken and duck gumbo.

And those dishes! They are thoughtfully seasoned and nicely presented by a chef who knows how to make people happy.

Behind the pass, sweating in his whites, is James Davis, the pint-size culinarian with a Gulf Coast twang making it all happen.

With Springs Orleans, Davis establishes himself as Colorado Springs’ best restaurant-cleanup man. He’s like The Wolf in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” — an unflappably cool pro you can call to get out of a mess.

After years running The Blue Star kitchen, Davis became chef at Crêpes Française. The crêpes were great. Everything else was lame. It closed.

Il Postino had the opposite problem. Everything else was great, but the food was lame. The place closed briefly and reopened as Springs Orleans with the same owners but with Davis as sous chef. When the head chef backed out, Davis took over. The staff now does casual lunches or fancy dinners as well as just about anyone in town.

Consider the crab cake ($12). Here it comes deconstructed. A splash of beurre blanc spiked with Creole spices surrounds a rich brioche, fluffy but cookie-thin, almost hidden by a huge column of meaty chunks of blue crab festooned by a few ribbons of crisp carrot and microgreens. The tall, colorful ensemble tastes as good as it looks.

Just as perfect is the gumbo with chicken duck and sausage over white rice ($12). The deep, brown roux is nutty and complex with big chunks of meat and slow-building heat that makes the whole thing sing.

A dish of trotolle pasta ($24) combines acidic sun-dried tomatoes with sweet tarragon and luxurious cream, then the whole production is topped with a generous pile of big, meaty chunks of lobster claw and knuckles. The trotolle has the perfect shape to hold the simple cream sauce. It is one of the great pasta dishes in town.

A dish of buffalo-style shrimp spread over bleu cheese fettuccine ($15) is almost as good — spicy, creamy and surprising.

The burger ($10) on a buttery brioche bun has the right rugged char outside and juicy indulgence of real, fresh beef inside. While the optional candied pepper bacon tasted too much like regular bacon to justify its $3 cost, the good, assertive Swiss is definitely worth $1 more.

Other dishes show promise but need tweaks. A bowl of red beans and rice with grilled pork loin ($8 or two-for-one at lunch) is a great value, but the small pork loin (which we got deliciously blackened) looks even more minuscule because of how it’s presented.

The po’ boy sandwiches ($10), too, can seem a little skimpy. The fried shrimp, oysters or crawfish are perfectly spiced with a crisp, cornmeal crust and tender, moist insides. The gooey remoulade slaw on top is a nice riff on the standard shredded lettuce. And the chewy ciabatta is a tasty substitute for crispy baguette. But too often the number of shrimp or oysters can’t cover every bite. A real po’ boy should have seafood spilling out on all sides. It is a delicate dance. Is it better to have more seafood and less quality, or vice versa? Hard to say, but I don’t think Springs Orleans has the dance down yet.

Other things need work, too. The wine list is short (forgivable) and boring (unforgivable). And the truffle fries are not nearly as good as Il Postino’s version.

But dessert more than makes up for it. Delicious fried beignets buried in melting powdered sugar ($2.50) are as good as any you’ll find in New Orleans. Bread pudding with blueberries ($5) was not too sweet, but deeply warm and comforting.

Add to that two-for-one offers on some dishes during lunch and happy hour starting at 9 p.m., and Springs Orleans starts to look like a very promising place.

Executive chef James W. Davis Jr., left, and executive sous chef Andy Lopez hold, from left, Seafood and Corn Chowder, beignets and Chicken Duck Sausage Gumbo. Photo by MARK REIS, THE GAZETTE