744 Warren St., Hudson, 828-0555. Serving lunch Mon-Fri 11:30-2, dinner Mon-Sat 5-10. AE, MC, V.

Cuisine: German rustic

Entrée price range: $5.50 (chicken burger) to $18 (16 oz. Delmonico steak)

Ambiance: comfy bistro

A cluster of men at the street- door end of the bar conversed with Wunderbar owner Imre Vilaghy as he paused in his duties—duties that might include mixing drinks, carrying food or clearing tables—and shortly thereafter he stopped by my table to make sure we were happy with our meal. We were. Enough so that I returned the following evening.

I can’t swear that it was the same cluster of men at the street-door end of the bar that night, but the group had a similar sense of belonging right there. “We have people who come back every day,” says Vilaghy. “Especially older people who live alone. They tell me that it’s cheaper to eat here than it is to cook for themselves.”

Not surprisingly, because the Wunderbar prices are lower than you’d expect in Hudson these days. As Warren Street has erupted into a trendy haven for upscale antique shops, so too have pricey restaurants joined the fray. By Vilaghy’s count, 15 have opened nearby during the four years since he opened Wunderbar, a few of which already have gone under.

But his is a place apart. It reflects his own varied past, beginning with an apprenticeship in hotel kitchens in his native Austria, then to Hamburg (as the Beatles rocked just up the street). Various jobs took him into Great Britain and South Africa; he arrived in Columbia County in 1978 and set up a bakery—Our Daily Bread, which he ran for a (non-baker’s) dozen years.

Ten years ago he ran the Oasis Café on Warren Street, and there envisioned a restaurant that would offer inexpensive comfort food and encourage the kind of social intercourse the Oasis inspired.

When he bought the former Lawrence Tavern, he was able to avoid a mortgage, and thus pare his overhead. He lives upstairs. And the restaurant below, appointed in dark wood with copper-colored ductwork, invites its patrons to linger.

The $7 daily lunch specials rotate back each week: Monday offers a grilled chicken breast sandwich, Tuesday is meatloaf, and on the following days it’s linguine with sausage, a 6-ounce steak, and fish and chips, respectively.

At dinner you’ll sit where you like if a table is available, and the service is easygoing and efficient. During a late-night visit, my friend Joe made a meal out of an appetizer plate: sausage with mustard and toast ($5.50), which gave him two types of wurst, split and grilled, and some appropriately spicy mustard. You can assemble them into sandwiches or, as he preferred, roam from one flavor to the next, crunching ticks of toast between.

Grilled shrimp ($6.50) is another meal-sized starter, with a good-sized spread of the jumbo variety begging to be dipped in the accompanying horseradish sauce. And there’s onion soup ($4), the classic Gallic brew with crouton and melted Gruyère, its flavor full and hardy with a hearty beef stock backing its appeal.

A versatile array of salads—house or Caesar—can be selected in two sizes ($1.50 or $4) and enhanced with grilled shrimp ($10) or grilled chicken ($9). Or try the Wunderbar salad, a mesclun with apples, raisins, nuts and more ($9).

It’s the entrée list I find most fascinating. Developed by Vilaghy to summon memories of his Austrian childhood, it features pork and beef prepared in traditional ways. “A cuisine is developed in an area where people are poor,” he explains, “and have to work with not-so-expensive ingredients.” Thus you’ll find pot roast, as classic as it gets, served with an equally classic helping of mashed potatoes ($10), lightly sauced and paired with roasted root vegetables, a toothsome touch.

The root vegetables are also part of the traditional sauce with the house specialty, beef Wunderbar ($12), sliced braised beef with a sauce derived from those veggies and a side of big potato dumplings.

During none of my visits did I sample the pasta or seafood, although there’s a salmon dish on the menu for $14, and fresh fish always figures on the specials list. That’s because I was too busy urging my companions through such items as the grilled smoked pork chop with creamed spinach ($14) or, my current favorite, pork Wiener schnitzel ($14), served with a salad.

But isn’t that dish traditionally made with veal? “Of course,” says Vilaghy, “but that’s not what you’ll be served in the countryside. Veal is too expensive for this dish—so pork has also become a tradition.”

And it works spectacularly well. A thin slice, pounded into a large cutlet, breaded and sautéed and served with a light lemon sauce—it’s a glorious melding of flavors and crunch.

Want an excellent half-pound sirloin burger? It’s $6.50, but spend the extra buck and a quarter to get deeply sautéed onions piled high.

Desserts, too, invite scrutiny. The $4.50 crème brulée is classic, its hard sugar crust yielding to a rich egg pudding below; bread pudding ($3.75) gets a vanilla sauce topping into which I’ll slip a shot of rum next time I order it.

“I want my customers to be reminded of dinner at grandmother’s house,” says Vilaghy, and he certainly has succeeded.