A friend once said to me she could taste any dish and tell if it was properly salted. While this person has a terrific palate, her comment sounded weirdly absolute at the time and maybe even a little smug. Salt is a matter of personal taste, right? Just ask my spouse.

That said, some cooks are so skilled at knowing when and how to season their dishes that they can make you forget about salt altogether, and John Asbaty is one. He cooks with such an assured hand that you don’t notice its presence, and ingredients leave his kitchen tasting more fully of themselves.

At Lincoln Park’s Ox Bar & Hearth, which he owns with Alain Uy, Asbaty prepares an earnest farm-to-table menu from an open kitchen. The ingredients come from local producers whenever possible — even the cocktail menu will draw your attention to the mix of spirits in its Negroni riff, all distilled in the Midwest. That ain’t nothing compared with the veggies. Ask this chef about the provenance of a carrot, and you’re suddenly on a first-name basis with the farmer.

Good thing Asbaty also walks the walk. There’s no “secret” to his roast half chicken, other than that he seasons it well in advance of service, then cooks it over a hearth with adjustable-height grates so that the skin crisps while the juices stay intact. It’s a modest miracle. You want beef fat wedge fries with this, some of Whoosie Whatsit’s rainbow carrots, and a bottle of (natch) Michigan wine. The food at Ox Bar, forthright and easy to love, will draw you in, though you’ll also need to bring patience for a service staff still learning to coalesce.

A journeyman local chef, Asbaty first met Uy more than 20 years ago at Evanston’s groundbreaking Trio, where they worked under Grant Achatz. The two crossed paths again at Hogsalt’s 3 Arts Club Café inside Restoration Hardware. Talk about diverse résumés.

Their restaurant occupies the former space of the Golden Ox, a venerable German restaurant that closed in the early 2000s after nearly 80 years. Those of us with shallower roots in Chicago might better remember this location as Burger Bar Chicago. It has been refurbished with the Neighborhood Restaurant Starter Pack: clangy tile, mahogany-stained tables, tautly padded leatherette booths, muddy light, and no soundproofing. The front bar has an awkward space where guests congregate by the host stand and cut off flow like a tourniquet.

Get past this blockage and you’re in a long dining room extending past that gorgeous showcase kitchen that includes a wood-fired hearth, a Mibrasa charcoal oven imported from Spain, a whole-log smoker, and enough space that you can admire the cooks mindfully going through their paces. Rev up your shouty voices and settle into a menu that is actually built for sharing. No three pieces of raw fish for four people, no entrées with microswirls of sauce. Here, the food comes out family-style: mostly dips and spreads to start, then simply presented pieces of meat and fish and big platters of seasonal vegetables that steal the show.

The starters are delightful. Trout dip, subtle and alluring, tastes of the sweetest possible smoke. Foie mousse, as soft as whipped cream, is all the better for the rounds of blue Hopi cornbread to spread it on. If you want to know what the freshest gristmill corn tastes like, this is it. Asbaty’s potato pierogi (the dough is his grandfather’s recipe) arrive pan-browned with cabbage, sauerkraut, and a horseradish sour cream that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, elevating the flavors.

Asbaty’s assured hand with seasoning is nowhere more apparent than in his merguez sausage, a fat coil of ground lamb, its spicing as integrated and satisfying as that of a Vienna Beef hot dog. Both the lamb, from Kilgus Farmstead, and the bracingly tart yogurt from Spence Farm it comes paired with are produced in central Illinois. These local producers bring the flavor and merit the shout-out.

Now for what doesn’t work as well. In two visits, entrées took two beats too long to arrive. Service felt chaotic. The dining room blare burrows into your brain, your water glasses drain dry, and bussers assume you’ve finished your meal and offer coffee. At some point, you give up on asking for another beverage.

The arrival of the main event, though, will keep you from curdling into grumpiness. What to order for entrées? First, a tip: Order one fewer entrée than the number of people at the table (portions are large) and overdo the vegetables. If that means a single entrée, make it the superb half chicken in its jus with onion marmalade. The juicy pork collar with mostarda and cider jus and the whole rainbow trout sporting pretty grill crosshatches and chips of fried garlic are solid as well. These proteins skew plain, but the veggies come dressed for a party. Charred cabbage luxuriates in brown butter hollandaise and poppy trout roe. Those rainbow carrots, roasted in a mixture of coffee grounds and salt, meet up with pickled cherries and spicy harissa on the plate.

I wish I could recommend the front bar as a good place to drop in for a drink or a quick meal, but my experience there hasn’t been great. One time it took forever to order a glass of wine, and once I did, the bartender set to work making a backlog of cocktails first. Uy eventually lent a hand to get me my drink, but then came another long spell to ring it up. Another time I was snarked at, then ignored, by the only person behind the bar, who I later realized was a liquor rep conducting a tasting. Maybe be sure to always have one actual employee in the front room?

Here’s hoping the service shapes up, because the house burger — fat, pink, a little gushy, built to be held without falling apart — is one you’ll come back for again and again.