“Knife skills are very underappreciated,” he mused with a sigh. “And yet, we have all these expensive knives out there. …” He shook his head at this sign we’ve all gone off the deep end, culinarily speaking.

Mr. Waxman opened the perpetually packed, “Italian-influenced” Barbuto in 2004. On a recent Friday morning, its massive garage-door walls open to the breeze and sunlight and its tables spilling out onto Washington Street, the restaurant felt like a paradise quite apart from Manhattan. Mr. Waxman was attempting to teach a hapless visitor how to make his Three-Tomato Salad (see recipe at right), which, despite involving very few ingredients, was proving difficult. Mr. Waxman trained in France after abandoning hopes of a career as a jazz trombonist at age 26, and ever since, he has prized two things in his restaurant kitchens: quality ingredients and technique. A proper salad therefore requires only that you get the best heirloom tomatoes within a 250-mile radius of New York (Mr. Waxman does not go for “FedExed food”) and that you cut them right.

There is more to this latter part than you’d think, but Mr. Waxman, now age 56, was a patient, if exacting, instructor, even as he moved restlessly about the kitchen. His staff streamed in and out, seeming less like members of a world-class restaurant team than like hip young neighbors. He greeted them good-naturedly. (“There’s my chef. He’s waking up!” Mr. Waxman crowed as a sleepy-eyed Justin Smillie—tall, blond, 30-ish, clad in polo shirt and cargo shorts—shuffled in. Mr. Smillie paused to greet us before heading to the Union Square Greenmarket for the day’s vegetable haul.) The smell of freshly baked focaccia started to permeate the air as a couple of cooks manned the kitchen’s large wood-burning oven, preparing for lunch. The hostess set out picnic-y red gingham napkins on the industrial-looking wood tables. Above the bar, from a large mock-up of his new cookbook, A Great American Cook: Recipes from the Home Kitchen of One of Our Most Influential Chefs (out September 12 from Houghton Mifflin), Mr. Waxman presided over the scene with a warm, slightly mischievous smile, sipping a cup of espresso.

Was this really his office, one had to wonder? Could a person spend his day like this in Manhattan—standing in an open-air kitchen, slicing ripe tomatoes in the breeze? “We had to do a lot of work to get it to where it is now,” said Mr. Waxman of the space, a former Rolls Royce garage that was leased in 1991 by his now business partner, the photographer Fabrizio Ferri (who lured Mr. Waxman to Washington Street to open the restaurant after they coincidentally moved into the same building and became friendly). One cannot imagine mornings so leisurely paced and glorious at, say, Daniel. I was reminded we were in New York only when Keith McNally drove by, presumably on his way to work. “See you tonight!” called out Mr. Waxman with a wave (he was eating at Balthazar later, he explained).

MR. WAXMAN IS A CALIFORNIA TRANSPLANT and onetime Alice Waters protégé. He opened his first New York restaurant, the acclaimed and popular Jams, in 1984, and more recently owned Washington Park—also beloved while it lasted—in the space that is now Cru. Mr. Waxman is tan, rumpled and considerably leaner than he appears on the cover of his new cookbook, but he’s a towering figure among his peers and the city’s in-the-know foodies, often credited with introducing “California” cooking—which involves grills, fresh ingredients and simplicity—to the East Coast. As Bobby Flay puts it in the book’s foreword: “The mid-1980s brought the food revolution to America—and I was working for one of its generals.” Mr. Waxman has also mentored, among many others, Joey Campanaro of The Little Owl, Jimmy Bradley of the Red Cat, and Aaron Sanchez of Centrico, whom he called “his adopted son,” adding, “I have a lot of adopted sons.”

Yet Mr. Waxman does not cultivate the public persona of a Tom Colicchio or a Jean-Georges or even a Danny Meyer. And why would he? The focus of his entire project as a chef—and, in a way, the foundation of his larger worldview—is his ingredients, and to that end, he’s quick to deflect attention off himself and onto the growers, fishermen and farmers who supply him with its raw materials each morning (Barbuto is on the “zero-inventory plan,” he explained, meaning food is brought in every morning and cleaned out entirely by night). They can be a “disorganized” bunch, he said of his suppliers, but he works hard to cultivate relationships, ensuring a constant stream of fresh local ingredients into New York City—this least bucolic of places. “There’s nothing better than going right from the yard to the table,” he said. “These tomatoes were probably picked yesterday or the day before.”

Mr. Waxman can hold forth on the tomato for hours. “Tomatoes are like little babies,” he said. “They always misbehave. They’re very persnickety. If it rains one day, they get mad. Or if it’s not sunny for them, or it’s too foggy, or the wind blows too hard. The farmers are like parents. So it’s easy to make a tomato salad, but the farmers that grew the stuff—that wasn’t easy. It wasn’t that easy to go get them. The easy part is assembling it.” Mr. Waxman buys his astonishing variety of heirloom tomatoes from a few chosen farmers at the Greenmarket (Hawthorne Valley Farm and Ryder Farm Cottage Industries are among his favorites). “Heirloom tomatoes were probably last widely popular in the 20’s and 30’s,” he reflected. “At some point, we all decided we wanted beefsteak tomatoes like New Jersey’s. So all the agricultural departments around the country said, ‘Well, let’s get a tomato that you can pick slightly green, put in a box, and send anywhere in the world.’ And that’s what happened to the tomato industry. To the point where people look at heirloom tomatoes and say, ‘What is that?’ They’re expensive because everyone stopped growing them.” It’s a phenomenon, Mr. Waxman explained, that goes far beyond tomatoes. “Everyone wanted something standardized,” he said. “You know, they wanted red snappers to be this big”—he held up his hands to demonstrate—“so if a red snapper was this big they didn’t know what to do with it. So now we’re kind of relearning everything.”

Mr. Waxman’s is a fashionable approach to cooking these days, but he’s been doing it this way for years. He’s quick to explain that his focus on the purity and quality of ingredients just better serves his flavor (and hey, he’s gotta sell the stuff), and in this way he makes the whole eco-consciousness project sound refreshingly modest. While he’s genuinely concerned for animal welfare, seeking out poultry and veal and beef that has been properly fed and raised, he seems equally concerned for tomato welfare. “I don’t want to eat anything that’s been treated poorly, whether animal, vegetable or fish,” he said, adding, “There has to be some kind of respect.” He comes off not as a zealot, or even an environmentalist, but just as a person of eminent good sense: thoughtful, practical, vaguely surprised that the rest of us are just now catching on to what he’s always known—local food is best.

The rest of us may dote on our miniature Chihuahuas and choose not to contemplate the origins of our dinner, but there is no avoiding where something comes from in Mr. Waxman’s kitchen. It’s the only thing that matters. That, and the knife technique, which ensures that once you are in possession of the perfect ingredient, you actually use the right parts of it. Most people don’t do this, he explained, “which is why there are so many shitty tomato salads.”

MR. WAXMAN DOESN'T SPEND much time cooking at Barbuto anymore—“My world’s a little different now. I put in my years behind the stove,” he said—but he’s at the restaurant most days nonetheless, chatting up the regulars, popping in and out of the kitchen and overseeing the menu, which changes daily based on the seasonal availability of ingredients, all of which he tries to source from within the aforementioned 250 miles of the city (this is possible for everything except olive oil and wine, he said. Olive oil because they don’t make it in these parts, and wine because “if I was stuck with the wineries just in New York, I wouldn’t be that happy”). His food, he will tell you, is more the simple sum of the best ingredients than the expression of any sort of culinary genius. Or rather: “Boulud is a surgeon. I’m a pharmacist!” Mr. Waxman thinks of himself more as a “home cook” than a big restaurant chef—hence the name of his book—and he has tried to channel that vibe into his latest publishing effort, which features recipes he makes at Barbuto but also some he makes at home for his three young kids: Everything from Crispy Chicken and Goat Cheese Burritos to Lobster and Potato Chip Salad to Pizza with Bacon, Scallions, Parmesan and Tomato.

The prevailing sense is of a man who loves to cook, and who has spent upwards of 30 years laboring contentedly away at his life’s calling. Food, he thinks, should be a casual, participatory social experience. He has little use for the “chemist” chefs currently fixating the international food scene, disciples of Spain’s Ferran Adrià, who have popularized the idea of foam-as-food. “I’m intrigued by it from an intellectual point of view,” he said. “And I’m the last person to want to stymie creativity. But I also fundamentally believe that there should be as few steps as possible—that it should come from the field to the plate with the least amount of fuss. I think people are going to come around to the way I think. I think they’ll get sick and tired of it.” And while he claimed he would be nowhere without his French technique, Mr. Waxman still departs from the Jean-Georges’s and Daniel Boulud’s of the world in one important way: “In the old days, if you’d go to Bouley, you sit down and eat from six to twelve,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to eat that long. The last concert I went to was Sun Ra’s Arkestra, and that was six hours, and that was too long for me, too! The whole religious aspect of dining—I’m over it.”

Which brings us back to our salad: laboriously, if clumsily, cut; casually assembled and jumbled together by hand; and then, while Mr. Waxman watched carefully, drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and “broadcast” with sea salt (the recipe calls for red wine vinegar, but Mr. Waxman believes in improvising, and besides, he had great balsamic that day). He had his chef whip up some pizzas as an accompaniment, and we hunkered down at the picnic-style table in the middle of Barbuto’s kitchen—which Mr. Waxman said he seats twice a night—to eat. It all suddenly seemed rather easy. The Greenmarket, the slicing, the drizzling: Farm cooking in Manhattan! It was, we think, the best pizza and tomato salad of our life. Was it just that we were sitting right in the kitchen, 10 feet from the oven? Was it the breeze? Or was it the tomatoes, which an hour earlier had been sitting over on 14th Street at the market? Mr. Waxman clearly had his ideas. “I’d rather drive 100 miles to the farm, pick up squash, eggplant, strawberries, pile in the car with it all, bring it back, throw it on the table and cook it than go to Whole Foods,” said Mr. Waxman, reflecting on his ideal meal scenario. “But that’s just me.”

Heady comparisons have been made between Sight Unseen and Death of a Salesman (and-because, I guess, the artist-hero is a guilty Jew-the novels of Philip Roth). But those are wild claims. My problem-if it is mine-is that I don't feel a thing for its superficial, empty hero, the artist Jonathan Waxman, who's in search of his lost innocence and promise.

Where others see a tortured or subtly fascinating man, I'm afraid I see someone who's only shallow and presumptuous. It is Mr. Margulies' purpose, I assume, to show us the kind of facile success story that's typical of the 80's arts scene, and Waxman-a man of wax-is smug enough to convince us at least that an artist's talent has little or nothing to do with his personality. But what of the rocky emotional landscape of the play?

Look at what essentially takes place as the action moves forward and backward in time (a trick in itself that's meant to intrigue us. But there's no reason why the narrative shouldn't be linear). Waxman, whose father has just died, goes to meet his former muse and lover, Patricia, who's living in England. It's the first time he's seen her since cruelly jilting her 15 years ago. (She describes herself as his "sacrificial shiksa".) The needy boy wonder, who's a media darling, is in London for a big retrospective of his work. Patricia, in self-imposed exile from America and herself, lives in Norfolk in a sterile marriage to a bitter Englishman, Nick, an archaeologist. It's soon clear that Patricia never got over her passionate, two-year affair with Waxman from the time they were both students.

It takes a Turgenev to explore the romantic obsession of first love, but Mr. Margulies allegorizes blatantly. Waxman's nude painting of Patricia, painted when she first modeled for him, is portentously entitled The Beginning . It represents the lost purity and inspiration the successful Waxman wants to rekindle in himself, and it's hanging ominously over the fireplace in Norfolk. Small wonder that Nick-the archaeologist digging for meaning in the debris of lost civilizations-seethes with dissatisfaction. Then there's Waxman's scandalously famous painting of a black man and a white woman nakedly fucking in a desecrated Jewish cemetery. Are they making love, or is it rape? It's another allegory. "It's all about what you make of it," Waxman explains glibly.

But the discussions about art and Jewish identity during Waxman's interview with a probing German reporter are just as glib. They're as contrived as the implied anti-Semitism of the curiously threatening German. Waxman's ideas-or Mr. Margulies'-fail to challenge us as a drama of significant ideas. It's a safe play, though it appears to exist on the dangerous edge of life and art.

"Hell, some art lovers were in a hurry to get to the postcards and prints and souvenir placemats and skipped the show entirely!" Waxman announces with the air of revelation about the big Van Gogh exhibition at the Met. " … The art was just a backdrop for the real show that was happening. In the gift shop!"

"Hm," the interviewer responds, unimpressed.

Mr. Margulies thus has it both ways. If you find Waxman an empty vessel, you're supposed to. If you find him a fascinating shit who's worthy of our sympathy because he's lost his way, that's O.K., too. (It's all about what you make of it.) But was this celebrated son of Brooklyn ever innocent in the first place? Does he have any integrity to rekindle?

Oh, to be sure, there's the precious, climatic scene that goes back 15 years in time to show the start of his love affair with Patricia. But it's a schematic, sentimental device. Everything we otherwise know about Waxman is self-serving and unpleasant-including the way he dumped his lovely "shiksa" after two years when his dominating, suburban, Jewish mom died. He's now meeting up with his ex-lover again after his father dies ….

Which leaves an ultimate mystery (without which there wouldn't be a play): Why does Patricia-the former boundless "student of the world"-abdicate from life, as if she's in mourning for the memory of a phony like Waxman? It's difficult to see what she saw in him in the first place.

That's particularly true when she's played with such authentic, blazing intelligence by Laura Linney. This utterly natural actress can convey a bruised, damaged life as well as a much younger, infatuated self when the future brimmed with magical possibility. Ms. Linney is so fine as Patricia that she almost convinces us that Waxman was worth it. But Ben Shenkman, a good actor in the wrong role, isn't electric-or dangerous-enough as Waxman. The role needs far more vitality and subtext than Mr. Shenkman brings to it, though my feelings about the transparently spineless Waxman remained unchanged when I subsequently read the play.

The production, directed by Daniel Sullivan, came to the boil for me on English soil-in the drab, cold Norfolk cottage, where the excellent Byron Jennings as Nick spits out the bile of damp defeat. A typical Brit in his way, Nick announces admiringly, "Picasso-now there was an energetic little bloke."

Nick is the kind of Englishman who knows best how to settle for second-best. "I take what I can get. I'm English," he says in a memorable line about his dry marriage. He's the envious, furious, middle-aged traditionalist resenting Waxman on every battlefront. "Oh, yes," he seethes. "You shit on canvas and dazzle the rich. They ooh and aah and shower you with coins, lay gifts at your feet. The world has gone insane. It's the emperor's new clothes."

Perhaps; but if you find yourself agreeing with the bilious Nick as much as I did, Mr. Margulies' drama about art and the need for uncorrupted innocence has lost its way.

Absolutely British

Sight Unseen 's Nick gives us an insight into an English type doting on defeat. The three British girls of a certain age who are the comedy trio known as Fascinating Aïda are finishing their successful run at the new 59E59 Theaters on Sunday. They're legendary in England, and they tell you all you need to know-all you may wish to know-about English womanhood.

They, firstly, do not give a toss (as the English like to say). Age holds no fears for them. They're proudly politically incorrect, but not too cutting edge. They loathe President Bush, but really hate Prime Minister Blair-pronounced "Bleeah" , as if throwing up. They're vulgar in the bawdy English way. They're also likable . You could imagine yourself enjoying a drink or two with them after the show. The bruiser named Dillie might drink you under the table, or so I imagine.

As entertainers, they reveal-as English women often do-absolutely no dress sense. They pretend to be making it all up as they go along (English cult of the amateur). But of course they know exactly what they're doing after 20 glorious years. They're risqué, cozy, pubby, clever, highly verbal, Gilbert and Sullivan witty, Sondheim wistful, sometimes old-fashioned and mad.

I'm uncertain about their dated little ditties-on the joys of Viagra, pretentious modern art (cf. Sight Unseen! ) and hot flashes ("Is It Me, or Is It Hot in Here?") Their stiff-upper-lip tribute to our Botox era is more my cup of tea. ("Our skin is stapled to our skulls with metal clips / And our legs look much improved / Since our knee-caps were removed / And recycled in our artificial hips …. ") So, too, their unusual "Song of Genetic Mutation," with its touchingly romantic ballad sung to "that two-headed baby of mine."

Pleasure in silliness-an English specialty, thank heavens-shines with their rousing anthem for troubled times, "Stick Your Head Between Your Legs and Kiss Your Ass Goodbye." Act I was a bit shaky, but the highest moment of lunacy came in the superior second act with their tribute to New Zealand, "Suddenly New Zealand."

When all seems lost in these difficult times-

Suddenly New Zealand doesn't

seem so dreary,

Suddenly New Zealand seems to

suit us rather well;

Lots of hills and dales and hills

and dales

And hills and dales and hills and

dales

And hills and dales and hills and

dales

And hills and dales

And the occasional dell.

And lots of sheep and lambs, too, and lambs and sheep, and lots of plots and homesteads, and plots and homesteads, and springs and geysers, and a lot of hot mud, and nice farms.

When are we going?

Wild Farmhouse Cuisine

"What's this?" asked one of my guests, holding up his fork. There was something white speared on the end of it. "It's a little bland."

I had a taste. It was a shard of clay.

Well, it could've been buckshot.

The dish my friend was eating was called "clay pigeons," and it's on the menu at Mas, a French restaurant that recently opened in the West Village. Mas means "farmhouse" in Provence, a region where no self-respecting farm is without its own pigeonnier. The soft shards of clay on my friend's plate weren't supposed to be eaten, of course; they were heaped upon the side-rather comically-for decoration. The pigeon was served in red, meaty slices alongside a small tart filled with pieces of duck cooked in a bordelaise sauce. It's the sort of dish you find in a seriously ambitious, Michelin-starred vaut le voyage restaurant in the South of France.

The food at Mas is seriously ambitious. Galen Zamarra was formerly chef de cuisine at Bouley Bakery, and he co-owns this small restaurant with Hugh Crickmore, a former sommelier at Marseille, and Thomas Wilson, the former bar manager at Nice Matin. Mr. Zamarra is committed to supporting local farmers and "day-boat" fishing operations along the Northeastern coastline; he also prefers using produce gathered in the wild. And he makes no bones about it.

As we sit down, a genial waiter comes by. He's sporting a hairstyle that resembles the framed quaffs hanging up at the Astor Place barbershop. He has a point to make. "Organic sourdough roll?" he says, holding one up with a pair of tongs.

If Mas is a farmhouse, it's a distinctly urban one, complete with a large bar lined with rough-hewn Provençal stone, a lounge area with tree-trunk stools and, in the dining room, a high communal table that was, on one night, filled with a surprisingly raucous party of young Japanese (incidentally the second largest group, after Americans, to make gastronomic tours of the great restaurants in France).

The dining room has low farmhouse beams, slatted wooden walls and a wood floor. Dark-blue suede banquettes are scattered with embroidered pillows, and sheer floor-to-ceiling curtains hang over the windows.

The theme running through the current menu is wild ramps, one of the few truly seasonal crops left. Ramps are wild spring leeks and taste rather like scallions. Chefs love them. Stop by the Greenmarket at Union Square early in the day and you'll see chefs on the rampage, snapping them up by the bushel load. In the kitchen, chefs invent new ways to serve them. When Jonathan Waxman opened Washington Park a couple of years ago, his springtime cocktail was a pickled-ramp martini.

At Mas, ramps seem to have made it into just about everything except the martinis. They're mixed with smoked trout and then stuffed into wheels of filleted rainbow trout, both sourced from the "Neversink River" in the Catskills. They're a great combination in this creamy sauce on a bed of pearl onions and fennel. Ramps are also puréed and served with black bass that's seared crisp and set on a carrot stew encircled by a rousing anise-flavored tomato sauce. Ramps arrive wrapped around a rare lamb loin and garnished with artichokes à la barigoule, simmered in white wine with carrots and onions. Ramp bulbs appear with lobster, served out of the shell on a bowl of carrot consommé laced with oyster mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns and sea beans of clay.

Mr. Zamarra (who was born in Switzerland but grew up in California) has a light touch and comes up with unusual but compelling combinations. Flaked Atlantic cod in a delicate saffron vinaigrette is sprinkled with bronzed Jerusalem artichoke crisps. Plump grilled Portuguese sardines come with a toasted pine nut dressing and are accompanied not by ramps but by caramelized spring onions and a crumbly parmesan sablet. Big-eye tuna is served like sashimi, in thin slices, with a hot beurre noisette that sears the fish, topped with crispy shallots for texture.

Desserts are first-rate. They include a hot rhubarb tart with orange frangipane served under a melting scoop of black-olive ice cream, and a sparkling granité of muscat grapes with strawberries and pink champagne. A fruit soup made of the freshest of berries is scented with hibiscus flowers. Provence meets Dublin in a dessert consisting of bars of guanaja chocolate scented with lavender and served with Guinness Stout ice cream. There's also a choice of 20 carefully ripened domestic cheeses.

The wine list is mostly French, with a focus on Rhônes and Burgundies, and also has hard-to-find bottles and vintage California wines. It's fairly priced, too.

Mas, which is next to the Blue Ribbon Bakery, is off to a good start. The kitchen is still hitting its stride-there are some losers on the menu, like the crab and Portobello salad drowned in balsamic vinegar. Dishes, like the salmon with cucumbers and dill, can be oddly tasteless, too, while others, like the lamb and the trout, are wonderful.

Soon ramps will be gone for another year. "What next?" I asked Mr. Zamarra over the phone.

"Wild asparagus," he answered, "local fiddleheads, white asparagus, squash blossoms, fresh chamomile …." Then he paused. "But definitely I could say asparagus is the next big thing."

Waxman's Back on the Grill

Chefs are like jack-in-the-boxes: One moment they're here, then they're gone, only to reappear somewhere completely unexpected a few months later. Such is the case with California celebrity chef Jonathan Waxman.

Two years ago, after a prolonged absence from New York, Mr. Waxman made a dramatic return to the city with the opening of Washington Park on Fifth Avenue in the Village. The chef who introduced California cuisine to the Upper East Side in the 80's was back again behind the wood-burning grill, turning out wonderful food to rave reviews. Yet one morning in December, I walked past the restaurant and saw, to my astonishment, that the windows were covered up with brown paper. Overnight, it seems, it had closed.

Now Mr. Waxman has popped up again, this time in the meatpacking district. He's cooking Italian at Barbuto, a trattoria he's opened with photographer-designer Fabrizio Ferri. (It's called "barbuto" because both men are bearded-sporting that trendy day-old stubble, of course). Unlike Washington Park, which was expensive, there's no dish over $20 on the menu, which changes daily. In a couple of weeks they will also be serving pizza.

The restaurant takes up a street-level corner of Mr. Ferri's vast two-story complex of photography and design studios known as Industria. Previously, the space was used for catering meals and providing coffee and sandwiches to people working in the studios. Now, the smell of charcoal from a wood-burning grill and oven ( de rigueur for Mr. Waxman) fills the air. A troupe of lanky models, six feet tall with rivers of blond hair and perfectly fitting leather pants, drops down after a shoot to mingle with artists from Chelsea and people from the neighborhood. The mood is friendly and laid-back; Barbuto is the sort of place where, after a few glasses of wine, you might find yourself making friends with strangers at the next table.

The cheerful L-shaped space has an industrial look: poured concrete floors, pale yellow brick walls, a long bar, and chrome and glass garage-like doors on three sides that can be rolled back up to the ceiling on warm days. Plain mahogany tables are set with white plates, gingham napkins and votive candles, and the cheery wait staff wear butcher's aprons.

I got my first taste of spring on a recent evening when I started off my meal with shad roe. Growing up in England, we used to have it with bacon-for breakfast, no less. It was not the sort of dish I'd expect to find in an Italian trattoria, although Mr. Waxman says that while it's not very common, they do have shad in Italy. He prepares it alla Milanese: tossed in egg and bread crumbs, sautéed in olive oil and served with fried sage, capers and black butter. It is unforgettable-I've never had better, and I urge you to run over there and order some before the season's over.

Mr. Waxman (along with his executive chef, Lynn Meneely) also prepares terrific, unusual salads, which change daily. Bitter greens come with anchovy and egg; red dandelion leaves are served with halved radishes (which look like new potatoes) and are topped with aged ricotta or a couple of breaded, grilled sardines; and tender pieces of lightly sautéed squid are tossed with aioli, frisée, radicchio and chickpeas, then sprinkled with sea salt and bread crumbs for texture.

There are usually three or four pasta dishes on the menu. White polenta, which also comes as a side dish, is beautifully light and creamy, better without the underseasoned mushrooms that were served on top as a first course one day. Ceppo, a short rolled pasta mixed with ricotta and greens, was also rather bland. But the risotto was extraordinary: perfect al dente, creamy grains cooked with chewy nuggets of rendered pancetta and onions.

Mr. Waxman has always been famous for a dish that, for me, is the real test of a restaurant's kitchen: roast chicken. Such is its reputation that a friend of mine, meeting me for a late drink at Washington Park one night, insisted on ordering it, even though she'd just come from a benefit dinner where they-of course-served chicken. "I just want to see if it's as good as I remember from years ago," she said. It was, and still is at Barbuto. Mr. Waxman uses a bird the size of a capon and has it air-dried so that the skin (which is rubbed with herbs) gets crisp when it's roasted; it's like crackling, and the meat is moist and juicy underneath.

It's a better choice than the braised pork ribs, which were rather dry, or the soggy roast duck. But the rustic lamb stew, topped with grated grana padano, is excellent, made with the legs and shoulder, which have been marinated in herbs and olive oil, seared on the wood-burning grill and braised in red wine. The stew comes with spring onions cooked with their roots on-of all things!-which gave them an appealing crunchiness.

Rib eye also gets an original twist, topped with sliced Hungarian "red hots": a fresh marinated pepper tossed in olive oil with garlic and spread over the steak. Order a side dish of roasted cauliflower or broccoli rabe to go with it, and what more could you want? For dessert, there's a sublime lemon pound cake made with almond paste and coated with a lemony syrup, and a rich, dense chocolate pudding served in an espresso cup.

Barbuto has a selection of nearly 100 wines, most of them Italian and reasonably priced. Before you know it, spring will be here in earnest, and you'll be able to eat that shad roe out on the sidewalk along with a nice glass of chilled verdicchio.

Of course. So instead, we began with a selection of antipasto–but it wasn't your usual salami, prosciutto and slab of Parmesan cheese. At Colina, a new Tuscan restaurant that opened last month near Union Square, the platter included fried frog's legs, along with grilled quail, red and yellow beets cut in chunks, wax beans and green beans, pattypan squash and langoustines. Grissini thin as telephone wires, sprinkled with sea salt and wrapped in a ribbon of paper, were placed on the table, along with hot crostini topped with lumps of crab that had been lightly browned under the grill. Spears of grilled white and green asparagus tossed in brown butter with Parmesan were topped with fried quail eggs.

Our waiter brought over a whole pizza pie filled with prosciutto, cheese and olives on a wooden board. He cut the pizza into steaming wedges and passed them around. "I'll leave the rest here for seconds."

These were just the first courses on Colina's "country menu," already enough food tosustainafarmlaborercomfortably through an afternoon's threshing. We were sitting at a long wooden table in what looked like the sort of Tuscan farmhouse that used to be bought for peanuts and respectfully restored by English expatriates around the hills of Chianti. The room is rustic and barnlike, with a slanted ceiling made of terra-cotta tiles, lined with heavy wood beams and hung with pretty modern glass chandeliers. The cement floor is stained a weathered ocher, and the walls are lined with fake windows with wooden shutters. There is an open kitchen at one end, hanging with copper pans, and the hall is lined with pots of rosemary and cedar trees. Piles of red peppers and lemons add a splash of color.

But if the whole thing feels like a room in a department store, it is no accident.

The room is not from Tuscany at all. It's a colonial farmhouse transported piecemeal from Brazil and rebuilt in what used to be the pine furniture department of ABC Carpet & Home. Despite all the money and effort that have clearly gone into it, the place is strangely soulless. It reminds me of the period rooms in museums. They rarely work, and usually for the same reason: that fluorescent light in the fake windows. Doesn't anyone find it odd, at night when it's dark outside, to be sitting in a room where the windows are lit to suggest daytime?

But if the setting feels fake, the food does not.

Colina's operating managers are Jeff Salaway and Mark Smith, owners of Nick and Toni's, and the consulting chef is Jonathan Waxman (of Bud's, Hulot's, Bryant Park Grill and Nick and Toni's in Manhattan), who is overseeing the kitchen with executive chef John Delucie. The menu is rather confusing at first. It is divided into complete meals, a three-course "express" menu with dessert for $45, a four-course country menu with dessert or cheese for $55, a six-course regional tasting menu for $65 (this month it's Lombardy) and a chef's tasting menu for $75. Lunch for $19.99 will continue after restaurant week and is a real bargain. The friendly staff are, for the most part, knowledgeable about the food and the wines on the excellent list (although I did have a waiter one night who seemed to have stumbled in from the furniture department).

The antipasti are set out in the "cantina," the bar room, where you can get light dishes and are allowed to smoke. Although they were pretty good, they looked better than they tasted and weren't as exciting as the rest of the food. I loved the tiny grilled soft-shell crabs I had one night, nicely crisp, with anchovies and peppers on a lemony bed of radicchio. The fritto misto, made with anchovies, squid, slivers of fennel and an aïoli sauce, was also good.

There are intriguing pastas on the menu, too, among them trecce, a rolled short pasta, with tender chunks of roasted lobster tossed in a lobster sauce and dotted with lobster coral. It was marvelous. But I was disappointed in the spaghetti with soggy zucchini flowers in a boring, vaguely creamy sauce with tomatoes and carrots.

Beyond the twinkling copper pots that hang outside the kitchen, Colina boasts a rotisserie and a wood-burning oven and grill. Fish is roasted simply in the oven. The ippoglosso (the poetic Italian name for halibut) on cippolini onions, arugula and cherry tomatoes is the kind of light summer dish I love.

All sorts of birds are spit-roasted, including "free range" pigeon (a term that raised a few eyebrows at my table), which arrived cut in thick, juicy, rare slices served with good Tuscan-style roast potatoes. I liked it better than the spit-roasted pork loin, which didn't have a great deal of taste. But the truly outstanding dish I tried here was the Florentine steak, an extra 10 bucks, but as juicy and tender a piece of meat, underneath a charred crust, as you could wish for. It came with a platter of giant fries on a bed of fried tarragon leaves and sautéed spinach.

We wound up with a fresh fig tart, a thyme-scented olive oil polenta cake with a compote of plums, and stewed cherries with hot zabaglione. These were on a par with the rhubarb compote with lemon cream and meringue I'd had a few evenings previously, which was great (and much better than the bland chocolate mousse and the fruits in a rather stiff jelly).We followed up with the prosecco and a glass of a delicious Italian dessert wine, torcolato.

ABC Carpet & Home is accessible through the back of the restaurant and I'm sure that more than one customer will be inclined toward an impulse purchase or two if they down a few glasses of wine before the store closes. After lunch one day, clutching our leftovers in ABC Carpet & Home shopping bags, we staggered into the store where we were greeted by the last thing we wanted to see for several hours at least–a display of Italian food, complete with jars of Patsy's tomato sauce and boxes of dried pasta.

Colina

* *

35 East 18th Street

505-2233

Dress: Loose

Noise Level: Low

Wine List: Excellent

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Lunch prix fixe $19.99, dinner prix fixe $45, $55, $65 or $75

Lunch: Daily noon to 3 P.M.

Dinner: Daily 6 P.M. to 11 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor