Hungry bowlers can find a few good things at Pinstripes

I can probably count on two fingers and a thumb the number of times I’ve eaten in a bowling alley — a pretty good cheeseburger here, a damn fine chili dog there. I recall a surprisingly satisfying plate of sweet-and-sour chicken at the Chop Stix restaurant about 20 years ago, when that place was connected to the Ward Parkway Lanes. In fact, I admit thinking that the chicken was delicious, so I’m not about to say I’m above eating the occasional bowling-alley dish. The problem isn’t the food — it’s that I’ve never been a decent bowler.

But if I ever improve, I’ll roll at Pinstripes, the six-month-old bowling alley and bocce court in the new-ish Prairiefire complex, and I’ll at least order some dessert to celebrate breaking 100. The place boasts an appealing little restaurant (which claims to have a “90-percent-scratch kitchen”) where mushrooms are stuffed, short ribs are braised, breads are baked, and pizzas and flatbreads are cooked in a wood-burning oven. Not everything works, but what does far surpasses that sweet-and-sour chicken.

The name Pinstripes suggests a men’s clothing store — indeed, the Country Club Plaza had such a place for a time — more than it does a bowling alley. But this isn’t your neighborhood 10-frame emporium. Here, the classic blue-collar game is played on what could be a leftover Blade Runner set, and the shiny, happy patrons look to have more in common with Arrested Development characters than with the swaggering roughnecks my father used to bowl with. Pinstripes feels something like a futuristic country club.

The dining room is cut from the tweedy cloth of a members-only affair, with a decent wine list, Intelligentsia coffee (or a Ghirardelli mocha latte), a rotating array of daily soups, a Cobb salad, seafood tagliatelle in which lump crab floats in a saffron broth, and a filet mignon.

Maybe potential diners feel intimidated. I enjoyed three meals in the Pinstripes “bistro,” and while the bar always seemed to be doing a hectic business, the dining room was never more than 30-percent full on the nights I was there.

“During the week,” a server explained to me, “people come in here mostly to play. On the weekends, we get a lot of people who come here only to eat. They don’t care about bocce ball.”

I don’t, either. I was more interested in sampling Pinstripes’ meatballs. They turned out to be adequate but hardly bigger than the Nike One Platinum golf balls favored by Tiger Woods. I ate them as part of a satisfactory but unmemorable bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce.

Chef Eric Camacho does much better with lasagna, a thick and cheesy slab of layered noodles, ricotta and meat ragu that’s served in a little iron frying pan. (That conceit works better with cornbread.) Italiano meets jambalaya in an offbeat risotto dish made with rustic arborio rice, spicy chicken and sausage, and sautéed shrimp in an intense basil glaze. I found it restorative on a cold night — as I also did a bowl of the house chicken-dumpling soup, a hearty concoction with lots of doughy little dumplings.

The soups at Pinstripes are available only in $6 bowls. If you ask for something resembling a cup, the servers stare you down. “I’m not trying to get away with anything,” I told mine one evening. “I just don’t want to be too full to actually eat a meal.”

Bowling is the game at Pinstripes, but requesting substitutions is the foul. And I would have been thrilled to substitute anything — even meat — for the sandwich billed here as a veggie burger. It deserves a point for being, the menu says, house-made, but many more points must be deducted for the patty: a gluey mess of brown rice, black beans, beets, mushrooms and an indulgent amount of molasses. Stuck in an oversized bun, it was too crumbly and mushy to eat in any civilized manner, let alone topped with tomato, lettuce and a slice of avocado.

The prime-rib sandwich, on the other hand, was magnificent: tender, delectable meat lavishly tucked into a soft pretzel bun. It was only a couple of bucks more than that meatless monstrosity, making it a relative bargain.

If I went veggie here again, I’d order the grilled vegetable flatbread. The crust I sampled was light and crispy, and the chopped asparagus, onions and squash blended nicely with creamy Fontinella cheese (which my server insisted on calling “Fontella,” like the singer of “Rescue Me”). I preferred it to the $13 sausage-and-peppers pizza, which was tasty but no better than what you might get at any suburban bowling center.

Among the desserts, a rich, flaky cheesecake with a brûlée-style sugared crust was the best of what I tried. Thickly glazed bread-pudding triangles were not fruity enough, and the thin portions of chocolate torte were dusted with enough powdered sugar for five more servings.

Cheery employees offered me tours of the facility on each of my visits. The suggestion was that, on seeing the swanky premises, I’d want to bowl or play bocce. There was almost no chance I would succumb to temptation, so I politely declined. I’m not about to take up bowling. But I might go back to Pinstripes for another sandwich and dessert.