Ruben and Isabel Toledo.

Explore the latest in design and view over-the-top installations while mingling with fashion elites like Tracy Reese and Isabel and Ruben Toledo, and then shop all the glam goods at a silent auction, all benefiting DIFFA—Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. Celebu-chef Geoffrey Zakarian is a co-host, so expect yummy food and also specialty cocktails—those fruity concoctions that get you blotto after just a few sips.

Pier 94, 12th Avenue at 55th Street, (800) 677-6278, 7pm-10pm, tickets are $200 (and include admission to the Architectural Digest Home Design Show).

Chef Geoffrey Zakarian and Joanna Saltz of Hearst at the Lambs Club.

Winos with whopping wallets will be chugging primo vino at the 40th anniversary dinner for Cakebread Cellars, hosted by founders Dennis and Bruce Cakebread (will they let us eat cake too? Bread?), featuring winemaker Julianne Laks, director of viticulture Toby Halkovich and culinary director Brian Streeter, all at The Lambs Club. Even post-Googling, we are still curious what a “director of viticulture” actually does, but answers will be served over a fattening six-course dinner menu created by celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian. The meal—think pork belly with hen egg—is definitely not Doctor Oz-approved and will cost you $215, but you’ll be guaranteed to be both sated and sauced by the end of the evening.

The Lambs Club, 132 West 44th Street, (212) 997-5262, reception 6:30pm, dinner 7pm.

The Carlton Hotel, on lower Madison Avenue, was once a notorious prostitutes’ hangout. Now it’s been lavishly redone by the firm of David Rockwell, with a café, a bar/lounge and a fancy restaurant, Country, that serves only dinner. Why the name Country? Because chef and owner Geoffrey Zakarian’s other restaurant is called Town. Mr. Zakarian (who has just published a cookbook called Town/Country) first came upon the scene at 44 in its Condé Nast heyday. He went on to become the chef at Patroon and then opened the highly successful Town five years ago in the Chambers Hotel. His executive chef, Doug Psaltis, worked at Alain Ducasse and was previously at Mix, which has closed.

The menu at Country adds another tremor to the feeling of displacement. Considering the price—$85 prix fixe—it is startlingly short, with a choice of just four or five dishes in each category and seven for dessert.

But there are nice touches, beginning with the frog’s leg beignet in garlic cream sauce that arrives when you sit down, followed by a cotillion of hors d’oeuvres: cheese goujons, halibut with a sliver of green chili and a layered crêpe with caviar and garlic. The bread is a large salted Parker House roll you break off into sections, and it’s splendid.

You can eye the chefs at work in the green-tiled open kitchen hanging with gleaming copper pans at the back of the dining room. Dressed in pristine whites and pleated toques, they appear to be moving about silently in an atmosphere of unhurried calm.

But they’re preparing some of the busiest food you’ve ever eaten. They can’t leave well enough alone. “Warm” sea urchins would have been nice on a simple bed of plain pasta. Instead, they come on top of doughy rectangles stuffed with something vaguely fishy. Meyer lemon and slivers of black truffle complete the dish, and the end result is that everything cancels everything else out. You stare down at your food and struggle to remember what you ordered. Squid? A tangle of shredded stuff, peppers and an overwhelming amount of prosciutto arrives. Threads of squid are somewhere in the mess. Asparagus? The spears get lost under a foamed asparagus mousseline, surrounded by dots of olive vinaigrette and garnished with a Parmesan crisp and lemon confit.

“Bottarga!” A young Frenchman emerged with a grater and sprinkled the dried fish eggs over blue-fin tuna, which is cut in rare chunks alternating with potatoes. I love bottarga, but it didn’t disguise the dullness of the tuna. He grated it over seared squid on squiggly black-tie pasta with Meyer lemon.

“There’s too much going on,” complained a friend. “It’s like typesetting: You should never use more than three fonts on the page.”

On the other hand, the foie gras terrine with caramelized orange and fennel jam and grilled country bread is wonderful—and simple. The shellfish velouté is also stellar, a creamy soup topped with an egg yolk on a slice of toasted brioche. Sea scallops, perfectly cooked, come with a delicate artichoke barigoule and niçoise olives.

To get to the main dining room, you walk through a dark, loud subterranean café (where I had quite a good meal last fall; the squid with cuttlefish, black rice and chorizo was wonderful) and up a flight of stairs. One night, we were seated at the edge of the dining room near the balcony. As the evening wore on, we got the benefit of the increasingly raucous noise from the café and from the “champagne bar” down the hall. It was like sitting in a lobby outside a discotheque. Luckily, we were able to move to a table further inside the restaurant. But apart from that noisy spot, Country is a comfortable place. The tables, set with tall candles, beige cloths and a silver dish of kumquats topped with a blood orange, are positioned far apart; the room is quiet, and the staff are friendly and efficient.

The problems are mostly with the food. Much of it is old-fashioned and rich. Berkshire pork with mustard-glazed apples and gnocchi is cloyingly sweet; grilled beef is over-salted and served with doughy ricotta raviolini. Halibut with herbs, potatoes and clams is tepid (this must have been deliberate; I tried it twice).

I did like the deconstructed blanquette de veau, though. The pieces of veal and vegetable are arranged on the bottom of a large white casserole. The blanquette part comes separately in a little jug. Poached lobster with salsify and cèpes is also delicious, but so rich that my companion couldn’t finish it.

The desserts from pastry chef Craig Harzewski, who was previously at Le Cirque, wind up the meal on a distinctly high note. He turns out a sublime bitter chocolate and preserved cherry tart (a sort of upmarket Black Forest gâteau) and an ethereal oeuf à la neige with citrus salad. A parfait is made with strips of braised rhubarb curled around an orange custard, dotted with tapioca pearls and served with crème fraîche ice cream. Almond pithiviers is served cut in a large diner-style slab, out of scale with the rest of the desserts, but it’s very good, packed with crushed almonds. Revisionist bourgeois sympathizers will love it. And they will find much else to like at Country too.

Town, located in the basement of the new boutique hotel designed by David Rockwell, has been packed since it opened in March. Like the small, inexpensive but hip hotels started by Ian Schrager and Andre Balazs, it caters to a generation less interested in gilt chairs and chandeliers than in cutting-edge design in settings that are as unhotel-like as possible, and where the last thing you're expected to wear is a tie. (Here, however, a standard room is a staggering $425 a night.) The building is the size of a large townhouse, with a white Nouveau Deco façade and immense gold doors whose claim to an imposing presence is eclipsed somewhat by the gold flags billowing outside Norma Kamali a few feet away. Town has a separate entrance that leads directly into a sleek, narrow bar, reminiscent of a 30's Pullman club car. On the night I arrived, it was crowded with people who looked more commuter than cool, clutching martini glasses that glowed pink or pale green (one of the house cocktails is a blood-orange cosmopolitan). There are no bar stools, so after about 10 minutes waiting for a table, we repaired to the leather chairs in the lobby until a hostess could lead us down the steps to the basement.

Town's dining room, also designed by Mr. Rockwell, doesn't feel as though it's in a basement. It's a dramatic, soaring space, with 24-foot-high walls that curve behind leather banquettes and sprawling booths, and paneled with translucent, back-lit wooden screens and squares of taupe suede behind long, cascading strings of crystal beads. The lighting is soft and flattering, but finally the elegance of the room is more corporate than romantic. Nevertheless, my downtown friends were happy. "It's so great to be in a restaurant where I'm practically the youngest person for a change," said one. It was also great to be in a dining room where you could actually have a conversation without competing with a D.J.

Mr. Zakarian, who was the chef at 44 in its heyday (and later at Patroon), has put together an intriguing menu of his personal favorites with executive chef Fernando Zapata. (I learned a new term from the press release, which describes Mr. Zakarian's cooking as "ingredient driven"–an interesting concept.) His foie gras terrine is nothing if not "ingredient driven," made as it is with chunks of foie gras folded in mousse and topped with a thick yellow layer of fat. It comes with a sweet pepper jelly that cuts right through the richness. An emerald-green fresh pea soup is laced with peas and strips of crisp prosciutto; a meaty duck terrine is enlivened by ramps and dense parsley purée.

A sea scallop (only one, but it was admittedly quite large) was paired with a delicate scallop sausage that provided a textural contrast, but overall the dish was bland. Carpaccio of fluke couldn't stand up to the stellar blood-orange-and-mint vinaigrette covering it; I would have loved it on a strong meat, like smoked duck. Grilled octopus was surprisingly dry and tough, floating in an acidic potato and lemongrass broth.

Even if the rooms upstairs are exorbitantly expensive, Town's prices–while not exactly bargain-basement–are not. There are no main courses above $29, and there are many reasonably priced wines on the 200-plus-bottle list.

Mr. Zakarian does interesting things with fish, serving a snowy chunk of halibut with pan-roasted salsify and a mild porcini-curry foam. Cod was thinly coated in a truffled sourdough crust and served with roasted beets and black truffles. Sesame-studded tuna was a bit overcooked, fanned out over thickly cut wilted cucumbers and finished with an oddly unassertive sea-urchin sauce. But rare, meaty slices of spice-dusted duck steak were a perfect match for caramelized endive stuffed with apple and a robust buckwheat pilaf. Loin of lamb, crispy spaetzle, citrus and olives made for a jarring combination. Apart from the snails, the veal tongue was my favorite dish, though it was too much for friends who hadn't grown up in a family like mine, which carved it whole at the table. Long, slow cooking had given Mr. Zakarian's version a tender texture and smoky flavor, enhanced by roasted artichokes and radishes.

Pastry chef Nancy Kershner, who was at Brasserie and Brasserie 8-1/2, has put together five cheese plates paired with fruit or marmalade. She also makes wonderful chocolate beignets, dusted with powdered sugar and teamed with frozen café brûlot, a cocoa-coated dome of coffee ice cream flavored with rum and Grand Marnier. Light, breadlike sourdough chocolate cake was given a nostalgic twist by malted ice cream and pretzels; a gooey chocolate soufflé with tart blood-orange sorbet floated on a spun-sugar structure that looked like the skeleton of a rowboat. Toasted pound cake was good, too, with roasted pear and rum-raisin ice cream. A refreshing gratin of sliced red grapefruit was also remarkable, topped with flakes of crisp, candied grapefruit with a scoop of creamy ginseng sorbet.

Like many Italian restaurants, Town's first courses and desserts outshone many of the entrées we tried. It's a chic, business-like place with some great food. And it has a sense of humor: The bathrooms are decorated with scores of clear balls containing miniature Statues of Liberty. That's probably the closest these customers will get to the real thing.

Town

* *

15 West 56th Street

582-4445

Dress: Business

Noise level: Low

Wine list: International

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses lunch $18 to $21, dinner $21 to $29

Breakfast: Monday through Friday, 8 to 11:30 a.m.

Lunch: Monday through Friday, noon to 2 p.m.

Dinner: Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., Sunday until 9 p.m.

* Good

* * Very good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No star: Poor