A year and a half ago, Dr. Harold Varmus went to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital with impeccable credentials-former director of the National Institutes of Health, a 1989 Nobel Prize-and a mandate to rev up research at the East Side institution.

Dr. Varmus, Sloan-Kettering's new president, wanted to bring in renowned scientists. Attract research dollars. Make Sloan-Kettering, the cancer-treatment hospital, and Sloan-Kettering, the research center, symbiotic, simpatico, an engine and transmission perfectly in tune.

On July 18, in a hot and humid auditorium on the nearby Rockefeller University campus, Dr. Varmus found himself trying to articulate that plan before several hundred Upper East Side residents, most of whom were angry, if not downright hostile. Like Donald Trump and scores of other big-name would-be developers before him, he was subjected to the ultimate New York City experience: an appearance before a community board. And even with the air conditioner throbbing steadily in the background, Dr. Varmus looked like he was beginning to sweat just a bit.

Dr. Varmus' hopes for a revitalized Memorial Sloan-Kettering research center had taken the form of a gigantic new building on East 68th Street-a 440-foot-tall laboratory tower, with roomy offices and the latest in equipment, to be used as a lure to keep top researchers and attract new scientists and doctors to Sloan-Kettering's staff.

To build this building, Dr. Varmus will need money: $500 million to $700 million. But he's also seeking a substantial boost in the zoning for the institute's main campus, from 66th to 69th streets between First and York avenues. Which is where the community board comes in.

Standing before Board 8, his back to the hundreds of critics in the audience, Dr. Varmus made his case. But the board, and Sloan-Kettering's neighbors, had other things on their minds, such as what increasing the hospital's as-of-right building allowance will mean for the area in the future.

Increasing the allowable building height, while also designating the institution a "large-scale community facility"-a technical designation that would further ease future building restrictions-is like writing Sloan-Kettering a blank check to build in a neighborhood already congested and threatened by encroaching towers, some neighbors said.

"This board stands for good zoning," board member Teri Slater said. "The helter-skelter development in this neighborhood is not just driven by science, it's driven by development. We're about compromise; in this board, nobody gets everything they want."

But Memorial's attorney, Shelly Friedman-who also represents other powerhouse institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art-defended Sloan-Kettering's request for increased zoning, saying, "We're at a point where a conference room could not be added to this campus without a variance; this is unacceptable." Sloan-Kettering representatives were also quick to point out that they had already compromised on their proposed tower, which will be 80 feet shorter than the 520 feet they're allowed on that single site.

Dr. Varmus told the board the new research facility is badly needed to enhance the institution's ability to develop lifesaving treatments. "We've now entered the era of magic bullets, in which drugs are designed based on our knowledge of cancer research," Dr. Varmus told the board. "We live in an extraordinary neighborhood: Rockefeller University, Cornell Medical School, Memorial Sloan-Kettering-all of these create an environment where investigators, post-docs, students and faculty clinicians are bumping into each other …. This is a place where we generate an academic environment."

But not all members of the community-even the medical community in which Dr. Varmus figures so prominently-agree with his argument for consolidation. "They [Sloan-Kettering] know very well that everything doesn't have to be centralized or consolidated in one institute," Dr. Lawrence Yannuzzi, vice chairman of ophthalmology at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Institute, told the board. "To consider everything under one umbrella-that is not the way research is conducted today, and to lead the board or other public officials or governmental agencies, or the public itself, down a primrose path of misinformation by suggesting that we need this monstrously large complex in our neighborhood, with all the implications and the devastating potential impact, is wrong."

Manhattan Assemblyman Alexander (Pete) Grannis made the unusual suggestion that the world-class hospital ship its research to another borough: to Long Island City in Queens. "There has been overwhelming opposition to this project," he told the board. "It is roundly condemned in this community."

But Dr. Varmus dismissed the idea. "I don't want to sound strictly elitist," Dr. Varmus told the board, "but there is a difference between research and research that yields dramatic results. Dramatic results come from centers where the best people of many disciplines get together, incentivized by the presence of patients and students and post-doctoral fellows."

Dr. Varmus had plenty of supporters.

"I don't know any researchers; for all I know, they're a bunch of self-centered bastards," said Miriam Hecht, a math teacher at Hunter College, at the meeting. "But the fact is these people save a community of cancer patients. When you look at the tradeoffs, you can't trade that for the amenities of this privileged neighborhood."

The debate dragged on for hours, with both board members and neighbors split. Finally, Board 8 voted 22-19 to recommend that Sloan-Kettering's application be rejected, reversing a July 16 subcommittee recommendation supporting the hospital's plan.

The board's recommendation will now go to the borough president's office, which has 30 days to act before the issue goes to the City Planning Commission and City Council.

-Petra Bartosiewicz

Neighbors Praying That Buddha Stays Away

When Buddha Bar opened on the Champs-Élysées in 1996, it brought new glitz to one of Paris' most chichi districts and immediately jetted onto the A-list as one of Europe's top nightspots.

For some reason, that doesn't have the neighbors of a new Buddha Bar-set to touch down in Chelsea by next spring-boogieing across any dance floors.

A franchise of the Buddha Bar has leased space in the Chelsea Market, the gigantic shopping and dining complex at Ninth Avenue and 16th Street. At the July 18 meeting of Board 4, residents lambasted the plan, saying it will bring more noise, traffic and late-night activity in a neighborhood with plenty of residents who are trying to get some sleep.

Board 4 is involved because it can support or recommend the rejection of liquor-license applications.

The proposed location for the club is directly across the street from the Fulton Houses, the largest public-housing complex in Chelsea-a jarring juxtaposition with a venue designed to appeal to affluent customers, neighbors said.

Among their big worries, neighbors say, is that a 500-person capacity venue with a requested 4 a.m. closing could aggravate traffic, noise and pollution in an area already saturated by large nightclubs, including Roxy and Park within two blocks of the proposed site.

Buddha Bar would also feature live disc jockeys and a retractable roof, prompting concerns about noise. The bar's owners have offered to close the roof by 10 p.m., but residents are not satisfied.

"The only place in this city that needs a retractable roof is Yankee Stadium!" one elderly woman shouted from the crowd.

Melva Max of the Far West Chelsea Neighborhood Association was furious that Buddha Bar's proprietors have been marketing it to residents as a "family restaurant." With live music every night and a souvenir stand selling CD's and T-shirts, Ms. Max said, Buddha Bar is clearly a nightclub masquerading as a restaurant.

But Raymond Visan, owner of the Paris Buddha Bar, told The Observer: "There is a misunderstanding between what we are and what people think we are.

"We are a restaurant," Mr. Visan continued. "It's not a club; it's a restaurant and bar. We have lots of neighbors in Paris, and we don't have the slightest problem."

Despite residents' protests, Board 4 approved a letter to the State Liquor Authority in support of Buddha Bar's application. However, the letter included stipulations on late-night noise from music and air-conditioning equipment.

The State Liquor Authority held a hearing July 3 on Buddha Bar's application, but no decision has been reached, according to an S.L.A. representative. Mr. Visan told The Observer that construction is set to begin this fall, and the club should open by the spring of 2002.

-Beth Satkin

July 31: Board 1, South Bridge Towers Community Room, 90 Beekman Street, between Cliff and Pearl streets, 6 p.m., 442-5050.

"As the chef desires," replied Mr. Bocuse.

Mr. Bocuse would perhaps have been more at home at La Lunchonette, which opened on Essex Street on the Lower East Side around the time Bigelow's counter closed. Here the fellow slapping the food onto the plates was not a young Puerto Rican but a burly Frenchman who was at times as irascible as Mr. Bocuse himself. Instead of eggs "over easy," he was cooking up cervelles au beurre noir, steak au poivre and foie de veau Lyonnaise. The place was crowded, chaotic and noisy, filled with artists and dealers, but it was fun and the food, if a little erratic at times, was good. Before long, however, La Lunchonette had disappeared from the neighborhood, along with half the art galleries. The other night, I rediscovered it in the center of the new art scene: Chelsea.

La Lunchonette is in a long, low yellow building dating from the mid-19th century on the corner of 10th Avenue and West 18th Street. From the outside, it looks like an old mafia club in Little Italy (perhaps because of the plaster statue of a Madonna in the window by the entrance). The restaurant consists of two dining rooms–separated by an open kitchen–one with a linoleum floor, the other with cracked, worn mosaic tile. It is dark, funky and romantic. The walls are open-brick or painted a deep red, the windows hung with nice bourgeois lace curtains, and paper cloths are rolled out onto the tables, which are lit with red candles in the evening. A huge display of blossoming mountain laurel stands on the long wooden bar (there is no lunch counter) next to a pile of guides to the galleries in the neighborhood. It is a cosy, friendly place, whether you go very late (as I did one night after the theater) or for lunch on a weekday when it is not crowded. The chef and owner of La Lunchonette is Jean-François Fraysse, a former actor and theater director from Carennac, in southwestern France (which explains the many wines on the list from the region, including one of my favorites, Cahors). For dinner, we began with two typical bistro dishes, warm goat cheese in a light puff pastry on a bed of greens and braised leeks on a lentil salad. This was followed by skate with capers, and juicy, slightly spicy grilled lamb sausages with sautéed apples. It all went down very well with a bottle of Brouilly that was brought chilled, just as we wanted it.

A few days later, I came with my son Alexander and his friend Ian for lunch after their fifth-grade graduation (after lunch they were heading not for art galleries, but for a bowling party at Chelsea Piers). As soon as we sat down, the children took out pencils and began drawing monsters on the paper tablecloth. Melva Max, co-owner and wife of the chef, brought over menus and bread and perched a blackboard chalked with the dishes of the day on a nearby chair. I read them out. "Cervelles au beurre noir. That's brains."

"Brains!" Ian's father is a brain surgeon. "Are you going to eat them?"

"My mom eats anything," said Alexander.

"Do you know when my mom was growing up in Montreal, her mother made her eat cow tongue!" said Ian.

"They also have sweetbreads, which come from the cow's neck," I added. (A few months ago, at the Restaurant d'Vijff Vlieghen in Amsterdam, I asked the waiter if there was any dish on their hideously overwrought menu that a child might like, and he had suggested sweetbreads. "I suppose he thought they were sweet," commented my mother afterward.)

"Why don't you order the brains?" said Ian to Alexander.

"I think I'll have the linguine with pesto," he replied, "but I want someone here to get the brains."

"I'll get them," I said.

For our first course, we ordered asparagus, which came in a creamy vinaigrette dressing; a rich, deep, well-flavored lobster bisque; a fine beet salad with greens; and a delicious terrine de foie gras made with creamy chunks of duck liver and served with toasted peasant bread. As we waited for our main courses to arrive, the children continued to draw, inventing complicated board games with rules that changed as you went along.

My plate of brains arrived tossed in black butter and sprinkled with capers. The son of the brain surgeon was appalled. "Those brains are cooked!"

They were indeed, but unfortunately they were underseasoned. So was the linguine with pesto, which was rather tasteless. But the chicken salad my husband had ordered was very good, served warm with greens. The steak au poivre and the steak Bordelaise were both perfect, full of flavor and served with creamy gratinée potatoes.

"Ew! My steak has silver inside it," said Ian, looking at the meat, which glistened in a rather silver way in the sunlight streaming through the window onto his plate.

"Every cow has a silver lining," said my husband.

"Dad, don't laugh at your own jokes," said Alexander.

For dessert there was blood orange sorbet, a large profiterole filled with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce, crème caramel, a dense fudgy chocolate cake and a wonderful caramelized tarte Tatin, all of which were demolished.

When La Lunchonette first opened 10 years ago, their local customers were not artists but truckers. They must have been every bit as surprised by what arrived on their plates as Mr. Bocuse was when he had breakfast at Bigelow.

La Lunchonette

1 1/2 stars

130 10th Avenue (entrance on 18th Street)

675-0342

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Short, French and reasonably priced

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Lunch main courses $9.50 to $17.50, dinner $11.50 to $21.50

Brunch: Saturday and Sunday 11:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.

Lunch: Daily noon to 3:30 P.M.

Dinner: Daily 6 P.M. to 11:30 P.M.

1 star: Good

2 stars: Very good

3 stars: Excellent

4 stars: Outstanding

No star: Poor