Some blocks have their affinities. For the stretch of East 7th Street off Cooper Square, it’s beer. Walking east, you come to the 150-year-old McSorley’s, which serves its own house ale; Burp Castle and Standings, offering a combined 500-plus beer options, and now Jimmy’s. Jimmy Carbone has been comfort-feeding the East Village for years as chef-owner at the space that was Mugsy’s Chow Chow, then Patio Dining, then Natchez. Now he brings his jack-of-all-cuisines skill to bear on an updated rathskeller.

The basement space shows its age well, with vaulted brick ceilings and Gothic arches, tastefully accented with taxidermy and barrels. A small bar near the entrance commands a view of the two dining rooms, while providing both with 10 types of well-poured draft beer. Draft choices come from Belgium, Germany, and Brooklyn’s Sixpoint brewery – the latter’s dark, chewy Smoke Porter ($7) is particularly excellent – while a host of gourmet bottled beers backs up the drafts. Although the world of brewing usually emphasizes freshness, some beers, particularly high-alcohol brews, age very nicely. The selection at Jimmy’s includes a section of wintery vintage bottles, like a malty 1994 Samichlaus lager from Zurich ($10) whose proof is higher than most wines’, or a delicious 2003 Christmas ale ($11) from England’s historic George Gale brewery.

It’s pleasant enough just to follow your beer down with the superb high-crunch Martin’s pretzels provided free, but Jimmy’s food is calibrated to be eaten with beer (often this involves adding beer to the recipe) and should not be missed. The one-page printed menu only serves as a rough guide to what’s for dinner; the final word comes from the kitchen, with nightly specials, featured beer pairings, catches of the day, 86ings, and so forth. This, along with the engaged service, contributes to the impression of a hands-on operation with minimal pretense or misguided slickness. The menu promises that ingredients are “local/organic when available,” and details like where a particular bass was caught are happily supplied.

Small snacks can be ordered separately at $5 apiece, or on a sampler platter for $9. Highlights include a Germanic salad of cold cooked green beans and bits of onion, piquant with vinegar; and an immensely appealing shareable plate of porky beer-sausage hunks, fried to crisp their skins and served with a puddle of mustard. Deliciously sharp-flavored escarole ($7) is cooked just a hair, until its leaves wilt, and served cool, with thick chunks of bacon in a mustard-tinged vinaigrette. A plateful of mussels ($9) is mildly seasoned, with just a pool of beery broth for added flavor, but the quality of these bivalves needs nothing more. A board of savory tidbits ($8, or $10 with a flight of tiny matching beers) is miscast as a “cheese plate,” but dark, rich fig paste and sweet, spice-glazed almonds and walnuts play as prominent a role as the sharp Spanish sheep and goat cheeses.

The pride of the main courses is a beef stew ($10) that epitomizes what the dish should be. Big, plentiful browned chunks of meat bathe in a dark, rich liquid (the stew incorporates Victory Brewing’s Hopdevil IPA), with potatoes, carrots, and green beans. Even better, $20 buys the “Workers’ Special” – a starter, a plate of stew, and two glasses of American beer. A glass of Victory ($6) drinks beautifully with the stew.

The ingredients of a fish stew ($12) depend on what’s fresh, and Mr. Carbone’s buying skills are at least as good as his cooking, but sometimes the results are unexpected. One night, the components of the delicious stew, in descending order by quantity, were: rich, tomatoey fish broth; mild Italian sausage hunks; pieces of tomato; three deeply tasty clams in their shells; bacon pieces, and only then the occasional shred of bass. The lobster the server touted was nowhere in sight; on our next visit, she counseled that “tonight’s fish stew is mostly sausage.”

A pair of roasted spare ribs ($12) have none of the fork-tenderness of the ribs you can get a block away at Smoked. Instead, firm-fleshed and doused in tangy tomato sauce, they substitute vivid sweet flavor, complemented by chickpeas and dark greens. Like the others, this plate is good enough to mop clean with bread. A skirt steak special ($15) that showed up one night was excellent too: Semi-bloody slices of pasture-raised beef with intense flavor and just a few vegetables on the side.

Rumor has it that Jimmy’s sometimes offers a dessert – tiramisu or a cookie plate – but, on multiple visits, I was unable to catch them in the act. Settling for a vintage ale and the cheese plate isn’t an awful thing, but you can make a great chocolate cake with stout.

For now the restaurant is cash-only, and the gears between the service and the kitchen sometimes mesh imperfectly. But the goals of coziness, affordability, and deliciousness are neatly met. It feels like a decades-old hangout, a thriving relic of the old East Village. Perhaps someday it will be.

Jimmy’s, 43 E. 7th St., between Second and Third avenues, 212-982-3006.