At Pazzo Ristorante, located inside downtown Portland’s flossy Hotel Vintage Plaza, the Northern Italian cooking is refreshingly sharp. Primis such as spaghettini in a guinea hen ragù and a squash–filled tortelli in a brown–butter sauce stand out from the half–dozen house–made pasta selections on the menu. Fresh ingredients do the talking in a sprightly secondi of seared tuna served over lobster mushrooms, blood oranges, and spinach. Smartly attired servers come to coddle, and after describing each nightly special down to its details, they still have enough breath left over to walk you through a twenty–page wine list.