It all started last September, when--egged on by well-intentioned Katie Couric–type people--you went on a post–9/11 comfort-food ingest-athon. Who can blame you? Macaroni and cheese, washed down with vats of vino, proved highly effective in taking the edge off things. But, unfortunately, you saw fit to continue munching and guzzling right through the holidays. The result: You are now officially “jolly”--i.e., you went up a frock size and a half, i.e., you can’t fit into the high-priced designer drag I talked you into buying last spring.

Maybe you’re quite happy with the stout new you. If so, then mazel tov! If, on the other hand, you’re ready to kill yourself, then read on. The following lard-fighting strategies are currently finding popularity with your fellow flab-fighters here in New York and may work for you.

Liposuction: the old standby for gym-phobic, orally fixated, undisciplined folk. Here’s the new twist: In increasing numbers, the aging Manhattan cognoscenti are combining their annual sun-drenched winter break with a little quelque chose d’autre. They’re abandoning St. Barts for Brazil in order to avail themselves of the legendary expertise of one Dr. Carlos Fernando Gomes de Almeida (011-55-21-2286-8255). Loyalists now return every year for a touch-up; they call themselves the “Angels of Dr. Carlos.” Lipo on the torso will set you back about $5,000; throw in your neck and chin and you’re up to $12,000 (the price of an Hermès purse).

Recuperate for three weeks at the Ipanema Plaza (011-55-21-3687-2000; $150 a night, negotiable) as opposed to the Copacabana Palace, which has become too touristy. Ask for a sea view. While you wait for the swelling to go down, you can pass the time by fantasizing about the moment when you confidently insert yourself into the Mario Testino–ish, thong-clad throng. If you want to save money on your accommodations--and spend more on procedures--get your travel agent to find you a hotel apartment. Get comfy: Rio is the new Miami Beach. Stick around till Feb. 9 and flaunt yourself at Carnival.

Heads up for ultra-chubs: Dr. Carlos will not liposuck more than 5 percent of your body weight.

(Agoraphobics, take note: There is now a plastic surgeon in New York who makes house calls. Dr. Oleh Slupchynskyj will come chez vous and, for $1,200, give you your Botox shots. P.S.: He is not, as his name would suggest, a venerable old geezer with nose hair and a thick accent. Au contraire! He’s young and attractive. Call him at 628-6731 and see for yourself.)

The French call them poignees d’amour; we call them “love handles.” When I heard that the men-only Nickel Spa at 77 Eighth Avenue offered Love Handle for Men Wraps, I hightailed it over there to road-test them for all you fellas. And guess what? They work … sort of.

The Love Handle for Men Wrap is a 60-minute treatment ($85) that starts with a light massage and a rousing round of “cupping”--i.e., Mauro, the masseur, used his cupped hands to batter my midsection, thereby producing a noise like horses trotting. He then applied a tingly Nickel poignees d’amour unguent (not yet for sale in the U.S.). I was then asked to stand while Mauro maypole’d around me, mummifying my waist with a Saran Wrap corset. I was then told to lie still for 40 minutes, during which time I got bored and nodded off. The removal of the Saran Wrap was followed by a final and annoying round of “cupping.” The big shockerooni? My midsection felt tighter and leaner. Spa owner Philippe Dumont came clean: “Ze love ’andle wrap doesn’t get rid of fat. Zis feeling of tightness lasts five or six days. Then you ’ave to repeat ze treatment.” Go for the package deal: $380 for a series of five.

Now back to you girls! Reclaiming your old frock size is not going to happen overnight. In the meantime, you can chicly reduce your jiggle quotient with a new product from Oprah favorite and inventor of the famous Spanx Footless Pantyhose, Sara Blakely. Ms. Blakely now brings you--drum roll--Spanx Control Top Fishnets! Features include a comfy waistband, extended control top to smooth hips and thighs, and that old favorite, a hand-sewn cotton gusset. Ms. Blakely also guarantees that Spanx fishnets will eliminate forever the dreaded grid-butt phenomenon ($26 at Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue).

Re pantyhose gussets, here’s a tip I learned from designer Betsey Johnson: If ever you find yourself stranded without coffee filters, simply cut the cotton gusset out of a (fresh) pair of pantyhose.

Happy New Year!

The aquamarine S-shaped building, which was designed by Morris Lapidus--whose other buildings include Miami Beach's Fountainbleau and Eden Roc--was built in 1960 with reinforced concrete and is adorned with glazed brick and green tiles. The building officially gained landmark status back in May, but there's a four-month review process still to come.

Next stop, the City Council for an up-or-down vote, which should happen in the next couple of months.

F.Y.I.: King-size single rates start at $329 per night. A queen-sized bed saves you $20.

- Matthew Grace

My husband Jonathan Adler and I spent last week in Florida, commuting back and forward between Palm Beach and Miami Beach. We are more than familiar with Palm Beach, owning, as we have for the last two years, a dreamy 1970's condo on what is known locally as the Gaza Strip. The unprecedented number of trips to Miami were occasioned by the fact that my Jonny has just opened a store selling his wares on Lincoln Road. These daily commutes afforded the perfect opportunity to compare and contrast the two places.

Here are the major conclusions of my in-depth, week-long probe: Palm Beach and Miami Beach are more insanely polarized than ever. As Miami Beach gets progressively more louche, Palm Beach gets snottier and snootier.

Let's start with Miami Beach.

If you combined the hip-hop shenanigans of Eighth Street with the homosexual bacchanalia of Eighth Avenue and threw in the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Sixth Avenue, you would have a tepid approximation of the torrid mayhem that was Miami Beach last week. In other words, you might just as well stay here in grungy Manhattan. It was an especially skanky week due to the annual Winter Party. From what I hear, a good time was had by all-"all" being a bunch of skimpily attired blokes who poured in from all over the globe to have sex and snort crystal meth.

Meanwhile, up the coast in Palm Beach, people may not be having much sex, but they are definitely snorting-mostly with indignation. The incomprehensible snobbery that is so legendary is still alive and well. Last week, my Jonny and I sampled it firsthand.

Here's the story: A Jewish friend, who "passes" in WASP society, had somehow managed to finagle a week's membership to the legendary Bath and Tennis Club on South Ocean Boulevard. (Not the place where C.Z. Guest was banned after bringing Estée Lauder to lunch-that was the Everglades Club. This one is even worse!) This Secret Jewess rashly invited us to break bread with her and her "sponsor" at the B. and T.

My Jonny and I are the anti-WASPs : We, like Mr. and Mrs. Federline, are nouveau riche and proud of it. The fetishization of everything WASP-y in Palm Beach is a source of great amusement and fascination (not to mention creative inspiration). This invitation was an opportunity for us to peek inside one of the great bastions of gentile elitism and observe these bizarre white-bread people on their home turf-and, one hopes, to confirm our belief in the utter pointlessness of good taste. Would we find them to be as worthy, fabulous and generally superior as they seem to think they are? Our knuckles were white with anticipation.

We also saw this lunch as being a bit like a Survivor challenge: Whichever one of us was strong-armed toward the exit first would forfeit immunity.

"You're so obviously Jewish, and you're gay," I said confidently. "You're never even going to make it across the threshold."

"You're such a big screaming queen," countered my Jonny, "you won't last two seconds-unless, of course, they mistake you for a woman, which is a definite possibility." Grr!

Our dates, the Secret Jewess and the WASP Sponsor, swung by to pick us up at the appointed hour. The WASP Sponsor took one look at my Dolce and Gabbana mandals and said, "Hmm. You know what, the B. and T. is just so damn formal and stuffy, why don't we just go to the Four Seasons instead?"

The WASP Sponsor then promptly sent her nanny and kids to the B. and T.-I guess it wasn't too formal for them-and off we went to enjoy the alleged informality of the Four Seasons.

We'd been punk'd by a WASP.

Later that day, we checked in with our Secret Jewess, who confirmed our darkest suspicions: The WASP Sponsor had apparently retracted the invitation as soon as she saw us mincing toward her vehicle. "I could get one of them in, maybe, but two? Not on your nelly!"

As a consolation prize, our Secret Jewess gave us a card that was handed to her at the club while she, sloppily dressed, was enjoying a bowl of macaroni and cheese:

"YOUR ATTIRE IS NOT APPROPRIATE TO THE STANDARDS OF THE CLUB AND WE ASK THAT YOU PLEASE CHANGE PROMPTLY."

I've made copies of it and am handing them out as I see fit.

Despite the archaic inhospitableness of certain Palm Beach institutions, I would still pick P.B. any day over M.B. The junk shops are better, the eateries are better, and we can take our dog on the beach. Without the distraction of crystal-meth orgies, I have masses of time to read.

While in Florida, I enjoyed an astoundingly sizzling page-turner. If Iris Murdoch was reincarnated as a punk rocker and living in contemporary Japan, she would be the acclaimed authoress Natsuo Kirino, and she might have written the gripping and appalling Out ($9.71 for the Vintage paperback on Amazon), a crime novel about four women who work in a boxed-lunch factory. This book is so entertainingly vile that it gave me anxiety attacks-similar, I imagine, to those experienced by the gays on their crystal-meth comedowns.

Anyone for tennis?

An Indian-Themed Scene

Taj is a hot new restaurant- cum -lounge in the Flatiron district serving Indian fusion cuisine. Being British, I grew up with an Indian fusion cuisine of sorts: It was known as the Sunday curry lunch and consisted of chicken and lamb curries served with mango chutney and endless little bowls of chopped condiments: peanuts, apples, cucumber, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, sliced bananas, sultanas and even desiccated coconut. The spur to this meal, which was served with warm beer, was a lethal cocktail that has all but vanished with the empire: Pimm's No. 1 Cup, floating with mint and cucumber.

Taj has no Pimm's on its list of cocktails, but it does have something called a "Budina" that's made with vodka, lime, mint and cucumber. It would have been pretty good had it not been served warm, like English beer.

The restaurant is owned by Lesly Bernard, the downtown party planner and restaurateur, and Lesly Zamor, the floral designer and founder of the ultra-hip boutique Bloom flowers. Amid the In the Days of the Raj setting of chandeliers, ottomans, silk pillows and reclining lounge beds, you can sample the menu (overseen by consultant chef Jonathan Lindenauer, formerly of Aureole and Jean Georges) which includes dishes like lobster with garam masala, and tandoori red snapper with chickpea-potato fritters.

It all sounded terrific, so I felt lucky when there was a cancellation on a recent Saturday night and I managed to secure a table for five people at 8 o'clock.

I was 15 minutes late, and even though I'd called ahead, the welcome from the pretty Indian hostess, who sported a Sanskrit tattoo on her arm, was rather cool. She stepped out from behind the desk and motioned to someone to take us to our table.

The restaurant is in a vast, dark room (with ceilings two stories high) that was formerly Bloom Ballroom, an "event" space. It has a mezzanine lounge with couches and, on the opposite wall, a projection screen that changes color from time to time.

One of my friends was at the bar, settling his bill for a glass of red wine. The person leading us to our table had vanished, so we wandered on through the darkness, past some lounge tables and chairs, to the nearest empty banquette, which was lit up dramatically under a 12-foot-tall yellow silk lamp shaped like a trumpet flower.

We'd been sitting for a few minutes when there was a brisk tip-tapping of high heels. The hostess stopped at our table and stood before us like the head nurse investigating a rumpus in the mental ward.

"Just to let you know," she said, "we have two seatings. You'll be welcome to sit in the lounge for as long as you like. But you must vacate the table in time for the next seating."

She gave us a thin smile and tip-tapped away.

I suppose such treatment is normal in places like this, but it was the first time, in all my years of eating in restaurants, that I've been told when to leave before I'd even been handed a menu.

Like our hostess, the room is surprisingly lacking in warmth. Yes, there are ottomans and couches, but the place looks gloomy, even when filled, as it was, with tables of young women looking for action. There's a series of wooden boxes set into the wall with limestone statues of the god Shiva in various poses, lit from above like exhibits in a museum. And instead of the soothing strains of Ravi Shankar on the sitar, there's the steady pounding of techno music.

"I like the music," said my husband.

I'd have liked it better had we been able to talk over it without shouting. These big, semicircular banquettes are just fine for "canoodling" (or whatever it calls itself), having your picture taken for Page Six or seeing if anyone famous comes into the room. But talking to anyone except your immediate neighbor can be hell. So have a drink instead. You'll need one.

Our waitress arrived with cocktails and glasses of wine. She was a voluptuous, dark-skinned version of Nell Gwynn, all smiles and twinkles, in a skimpy cotton bustier. "What's good?" we asked, looking at the menu.

"It's all great," She replied.

The food, alas, was not. Taj has a limited menu, with just four first courses and five main dishes, and the combinations of Indian spices and Western ingredients sounded interesting. But most of the dishes were badly prepared. Three seared sea scallops arrived afloat in a Gewürtztraminer broth (shades of Vongerichten), with whole baby carrots, oyster mushrooms and cucumber. It was a curious mix, like the condiments of the curry lunches of my youth; the ingredients didn't seem to have any relevance to one another. To boot, the scallops weren't hot and they tasted flat. Grilled "fragrant" shrimp were mushy, but they were perked up with some crisp pappadam and a zesty mango-pineapple chutney. What would have been a perfectly decent tuna tartare and wild striped sea bass tartare had been "fusioned" with a jolt of panch phorant, an Indian spice made from fennel, cumin, nigella, fenugreek and black mustard seed. The spices made the fish taste musty.

A salad made of wild greens, however, which I thought would be the most boring dish on the menu, was surprisingly good. The leaves were tossed in a light vinaigrette seasoned with chaat masala and tahini, and sprinkled with crunchy, fried spiced chickpeas that were as addictive as peanuts.

The beef tenderloin was straightforward: Tender, rare slices of meat were served with a good red wine sauce on some rather nasty spinach, along with a bland gratin of potatoes and root vegetables. The lamb chops were a disaster, cooked until dry (no one had bothered to ask how my friend wanted them done, and he forget to bring it up). They languished on a mushy bed of red lentils and spinach, with raita and a cumin jus as a nod to India.

"To enjoy the food here, it would help to be stoned," commented one of my friends, a twentysomething woman who had just returned from a week of intense clubbing in Miami Beach.

A joint or two beforehand would have certainly improved the taste of the bland chicken breast, which was prettily served on a rectangular platter with crème fraîche, a spiced nut powder and a curious rutabaga-cauliflower hash. As for the pan-roasted lobster, it was barely more than an embryo, and what was visible of it among the mush of biryani rice, micro greens and dates on the plate were bits as tough as a maharajah's red leather slipper. But the tandoori red snapper, on the other hand, showed what the kitchen was capable of when it had a steadier hand. It was boldy seasoned with tandoori spices, perfectly cooked, and served with a small, refreshing salad of shaved cucumber and carrots, and crisp chickpea-potato fritters the size of silver dollars.

The wine list is short, international and fairly priced. It also offers what for me was a novelty, Indian wine. We tried the red, a Cabernet Shiraz, and a rosé. I asked my husband what he thought. At college he'd been lucky enough to take classes with the great poet and translator, Robert Fitzgerald. "He graded papers in ascending order: 'not very good,' 'pretty good' and 'not bad at all,'" my husband said. "This shiraz is not very good-like the food."

For dessert, there were raspberry-filled samosas served with chocolate sauce. They tasted like breakfast food in a diner-thick and doughy.

"It's a Sex and the City type of place," said my young friend from Miami Beach. The next table was entirely made up of women. "They look like out-of-state girls, and they'll be like: 'Oh, we ate at Taj last night!'"

When we stepped outside, mercifully having finished dinner without being asked to vacate our table, velvet ropes had gone up by the door-now manned by bouncers-where a crowd was beginning to gather.

"As an experience," said my husband as we got into a taxi, "I'd grade that evening 'not very good.'"

But Taj is not really a serious restaurant, it's a lounge. People who like that sort of thing will find themselves right at home here.

I know all too well what he means: I have just spent a four-day weekend in South Beach and, to quote country songstress Charline Arthur, "I've seen things a woman ought not to see." To put it bluntly, Miami Beach has become a cesspool–and I'm not just talking figuratively! On March 16, the day after we arrived, a fat little tugboat banged into a massive underwater sewer, sending 12 million gallons of raw sewage gushing into Biscayne Bay and turning it into an unappetizing poo pond. We sat in our hotel transfixed by the excited local TV coverage, which treated this fetid occurrence as if it was some fabulous visiting dignitary. This unexpected arrival even had its own on-air logo: "SEWAGE SPILL."

Tired of watching gushing effluent on TV, we took a stroll down Ocean Drive and encountered the human effluent carousing at, and barfing in front of, the Allstar Café and the Clevelander hotel. The favorite pastime of this Spri, apart from ingesting stimulants, would appear to be having themselves photographed lying face down on the steps of Casa Casuarina, Gianni Versace's gorgeous house. No wonder Donatella Versace sold the place! (F.Y.I.: On April 5-7, Sotheby's will auction the fabulously gaudy furnishings and art from said house. Call 606-7000 for exhibition information.) The unsavory activity on Ocean Drive makes the early 90's Miami of Versace seem like a long-lost era of innocence and optimism. Where was the corny sweetness of the old Miami Beach?

Determined to find some vestige of this Miami of yore, we girded up our loins with germicide, and dove into this seemingly bottomless pit of sun-baked lasciviousness in search of Pollyanna. Here are my two tips (that's all I could find) for wholesome holiday fun in Miami:

1. Nude volleyball, anyone? Drive north (in the opposite direction of the poo) up Collins Avenue, past the Bal Harbor shopping mall. Your first historic landmark is on the right, just before 71st Street. It's the Normandy Plaza (6979 Collins Avenue), the hotel where the odious Andrew Cunanan festered undetected, smoking crystal meth, before murdering Versace, his fifth victim, in July 1997. Keep driving, and do not make eye contact with any of the dubious characters hanging out in front of the hotel. Drive over the bridge into Haulover Park and alight in the northernmost lot. Walk through the tunnel and onto the nude beach, and you should run smack into a vigorous game of nude volleyball. Rivetingly Monty Python-esque, this earnest, wacky display of coed sportsmanship is the very essence of nonsexual naturism. It's also the best laugh I've had in years.

If you decide to remain clothed, make a conscious effort not to ogle the nudesters–signs prohibit pervy gawking. My advice: don't linger, but rather flit (like thistledown) quickly through the fleshy masses and marvel at Dame Nature's jiggly diversity. The gay people, many of whom are tattooed and pierced, walk around chatting compulsively, as if they are enjoying the sidewalk afterglow of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The straight folks–cheery, upbeat and often bohemian–look like retired swingers. They pass the time by shaving each other's areas and belching. For the most part, everyone is terribly well-behaved, though honesty compels me to admit that I did observe one chubby Roseanne-ish couple digitally manipulating each other's private areas when the lifeguard wasn't looking. There's always somebody willing to spoil things for the rest of us!

2. The Hallandale thrift shops. These gigantic stores have, since I first started visiting them in the mid-80's, coughed up an endless supply of groovy furniture (Lucite tables, fab Halston-ish sectionals, plus more recherché mid-century American modernist classics). Unfortunately, the supply has now run out: On this trip, all we found was sub-par 80's cane furniture with nasty, splashy upholstery in pink and turquoise. This grim schlock left me feeling that the Golden Girls must be cleaning house (or dead)–and here is all their nasty furniture.

The only stuff worth snagging was the metal chinoise patio furniture which, with a lick of paint and the right upholstery, can look very 70's Billy Baldwin. Vintage clothing? Slim pickings: After much burrowing and breath-holding, my bloke got a great wool camel zip-front 70's Givenchy sweater for $1.99.

So why check out these thrift shops? You may, if you are lucky, spot one of those almost-extinct, eccentrically attired Jewish or Cuban ladies. You know the ones: They were formerly a dime a dozen on Lincoln Road and now are nowhere to be seen in South Beach. They favor draped jersey turbans, tangerine or emerald pant suits, shell-encrusted raffia purses, plastic daisy earrings and La Rose shoes. Take the Hallandale Beach Boulevard exit off I-95 and search for these exotic creatures before they all dodo.

Food

The new restaurants in South Beach are all self-consciously sexy, with silly pseudo-sensual names like Touch, Pearl and Wish. We decided to check out Tantra (1445 Pennsylvania Avenue). It's an insanely ambitious concept which marries food with some cockamamie Eastern erotic philosophy to produce an "aphrodisiac cuisine." I ordered a "love apple" as a starter. Two minutes later, a rock-hard, baseball-sized, unripe tomato with a triangle (geddit?) cut out and filled with goat cheese was dumped in front of me. I highly recommend this extremely noisy restaurant–but only to horny, New Age, deaf people.

Lunch at the Delano (1685 Collins Avenue) has become a veritable art installation: I refer to the fascinating juxtaposition between the brilliant Phillipe Starck décor (it hasn't dated at all) and the now highly conventional clientele. It looked as if Ian Shrager had commissioned hyper-realist sculptor Duane Hanson to people his restaurant with archetypal Amex Platinum Card holders.

Also recommended: the breakfast buffet at the Tides (1220 Ocean Drive)–delicious and great for spotting third-string celebrities, e.g. a grumpy Lauren Hutton on crutches and a cheery Blaine Trump.

The rest of the time we took out from Joe's Stone Crab (11 Washington Avenue) and happily stank up our room while watching COPS .

Hotels

Don't make a reservation at a beachfront hotel. From Joe's Stone Crab right up to the Fontainebleau, there is a river of jackhammering construction comparable to Times Square. Don't accept a ground-floor room, either; you'll get robbed.

My pick: the Hotel Astor (956 Washington Avenue, 800-270-4981, $150 and up). Cameron Diaz and Matt Dillon stayed there while making There's Something About Mary –so there! It's not entirely sleaze-free: We spotted several hookers during our stay, but they were classy girls. Early one morning, one young lady emerged from a "session" to sun herself on a balcony directly in front of our room. As we enjoyed a salubrious breakfast of granola and berries, she entertained herself by twanging her thong and road-testing her repertoire of provocative poses in a spectacular pair of mint-green Lucite pumps. F.Y.I.: These porno-pumps are now as common in M.B. as flip-flops and can be purchased at any number of locations on Collins Avenue.

Miscellaneous Tips

–Celebs are hard to spot, post-Gianni. Madonna, Cher and Sly have all moved on. But Janet Reno is back! My cabby suggested, rather depressingly, that I join the happy throng of Cuban protesters outside her house in Hialeah and pray for a sighting.

–Fabio, a legit masseur from Brazil, will, if he's not traveling with the Costa Rican soccer team, come to your hotel and give what my massage-addicted bloke rated as the best rub-down he's ever had (305-729-7314).

–Re: discos. You must decide whether you would rather spend the evening with drunks or druggies. Salvation (1717 West Avenue) has a high cover charge: According to my pig friend, "this means everyone is on Ecstasy and-or crystal meth, and the establishment is not anticipating high-volume liquor sales." Level (formerly Ingrid Casares' Liquid, at 1235 Washington Avenue), on the other hand, has a low cover charge, which according to my friend is "great for old fogies who drink themselves stupid and go home early"–i.e., 4 a.m.

–If you just happen to get addicted to crack while you're down there, no problem. As per the cab driver who took us to the airport: "Three Prozac a day and I lost the craving."

The small, cream-colored restaurant, which is comfortable and beautifully lit, would look right at home in a trendy Art Deco boutique hotel on Miami Beach. The windows are hung with open white Venetian blinds; more blinds act as space dividers and conceal the light fixtures in the two long dining rooms, which have dropped ceilings and long banquettes and are decorated with pale sprays of orchids. The bathroom is hilarious, with fish tanks in the walls (I only spotted one fish) and no light. Four black-and-white TV monitors hang over the bar, showing views of the fish tanks as well as the interior of Double Happiness, the basement lounge next door that is owned by the same people. Down a steep, narrow flight of steps, Double Happiness is dark and pulsing with music, with candle-lit tables hidden away in nooks. According to the owners, it was once, of all things, a mob-run gay speakeasy.

Mr. Santos, formerly at Rue 57 and Time Cafe, works out of a kitchen so small it could break a man made of lesser stuff. But his ambitions are clear when you sit down to a table set with bowls of fleur de sel and green extra-virgin olive oil. The eccentric wine list has such oddities as a Nebbiolo Rosato, an Italian rosé made from barolo and barbaresco grapes. This wine was the perfect choice for the roast rabbit, which came wrapped in a thin layer of crisp prosciutto and set on a mound of mashed Yukon Gold potatoes studded with black olives. It was topped with whole roasted garlic cloves in a Spanish sherry sauce. Just before he sent out the dish, Mr. Santos sprinkled it with truffle shavings and a powerful truffle oil. A lot going on? Too much, perhaps. But the rabbit was tender and moist and the wine dry and intense, acidic enough to stand up to all the different flavors.

One evening at the next table, a man and his daughter were extolling the virtues of their dinner–especially the yellow tomato soup, which, the man said, was the best he'd ever had.

"What was the secret ingredient?" he asked the chef, who had come out of the kitchen to greet him and was sitting next to him.

Orange peel, he said, explaining how he'd roasted the tomatoes with orange peel and thyme. The soup had a lot of other things going on, too: crabmeat dumplings, chive oil and strips of crispy fried bacon. But the man was right: It's a very good soup.

Mr. Santos' lobster stew was a dizzying concoction, too. While it seemed to have started life as a perfectly normal lobster bisque, the chef decided to take it on a trip to Thailand, adding snap peas, carrots, shiitakes, lemongrass, ginger and Thai basil along the way, finishing up with a good dose of coconut milk. But this baroque style got to be a little much when he confronted scallops and foie gras. He seared them both and served them with a warm apple-cider vinaigrette made with pan juices. If this weren't already enough, he added roasted fennel, dried orange peel and frisée with pine nuts. Has he never heard Escoffier's famous maxim, " Faites simple! "?

Despite the overlayering, Wyanoka is an endearingly quirky restaurant with sweet, friendly service and inexpensive food. It's uneven, but depending on what you order, you can eat very well. The sushi-grade tuna roll was pristinely fresh and served with wasabi crème fraîche and a salsa made from nectarines, red onion and fried ginger. Juicy chicken satay with hoisin peanut sauce–five skewers with half a breast on each–was enough to feed two as a main course.

Minefields, however, included the heavy calamari rolled in cornmeal; a mess of a salad made with green lettuces, frisée, corn, baby tomatoes and Cabrales (a Spanish goat cheese); and awful ravioli with aged goat cheese that tasted like old socks. Pan-roasted snapper was done up like paella, on saffron rice with clams, oven-dried tomatoes, artichokes, chorizo, mussels, lemon and olive oil–albeit with soggy rice.

The hamburger was another story. Mr. Santos uses certified dry Angus aged beef, and the secret to his wonderfully juicy burger is to mix some high-fat European butter into the meat so it doesn't dry out, even if you order it well-done. The portion was generous and came with chipotle barbecue sauce, smoked Gouda, charred red onion, bacon and phenomenal crisp, golden hand-cut fries. It was one of his best dishes, and was only $11. Hanger steak also had good flavor, set on a soft Roquefort and corn flan, and topped with crispy leeks, roasted garlic, bacon and balsamic sauce.

Desserts, arriving on plates sprinkled with snow flurries of confectioners' sugar, were homey and satisfying. The pumpkin cheesecake had a ginger-snap-cookie crust and warm caramel on top; a dark, rich chocolate cake was topped with crunchy pecans and graham cracker crumbs and paired with caramel ice cream.

The man and his daughter were having the Valrhona chocolate fondue, which came in one of those sets your mom consigned to the basement. I had not been much impressed when I'd ordered it a week earlier–chocolate sauce with chopped strawberries, shortbread and slices of banana not being my idea of a great dessert. But Mr. Santos said he usually serves it with pound cake and homemade marshmallows, too. Clearly the people at the next table were getting the works.

"My wife loves chocolate," said the man. "I'd hate for her to miss this. Would you mind very much wrapping it up so we could take the rest home to her?"

"Of course," said the chef without missing a beat, and he disappeared with the fondue into the tiny kitchen.

That's Wyanoka, ready for anything. When it comes to some of the cooking, however, I wish the chef would just hold back. As for the fondue, I am still wondering how those people got it home.

Wyanoka

*

173 Mott Street (between Broome and Grand streets)

941-8757

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: International, reasonably priced

Credit cards: Visa, Mastercard

Price range: Main courses $11 to $19

Dinner: Monday to Wednesday 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Thursday to Saturday 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor