Wordplay is a good thing.

Take puns. Dropping a good one (Prison walls are never built to scale!) gets you a laugh. While presenting just the facts (Prison walls are never built to the Texas Department of Corrections’s standards!) qualifies you for Sergeant Friday’s job.

So, hopefully, you’ll appreciate Urban Bistro’s irony. The name of University Park’s newest restaurant suggests rough city dining. But the sweet buttercream walls and soft sage fabrics say welcome to the gentle countryside.

The menu isn’t the expected quaint French cuisine, either. Just Mediterranean home-cooked dishes like gnocchi in warm tomato-olive ragout, chicken tagine, and cumin-rubbed rack of lamb.

For dessert, try the crème brulee trio — a sampling of chocolate, vanilla, and fruit-flavored custards — or the liquor-soaked cake called baba au rhum. Which you’ll discover is no play on words.

Sometimes, being direct is the shortest (and sweetest) way to get the point across.

Urban Bistro, 7709 Inwood Road, University Park (214-358-1100 or urbanbistrodallas.com).