Scott Conant

What better way to spend a beautiful early-autumn weekend than indoors, fantasizing about being in another part of the world entirely? The annual Travel + Leisure Global Bazaar returns to the Lexington Armory Friday through Sunday, and participating vendors include Patrón Tequila (which is apparently setting up a “Great Wall of Patrón” from which you may select your preferred strong cocktail), Oaxacal Mezcal and Mount Gay Rum. (Boozy!) Food will also be served—with participating chefs like Scarpetta’s Scott Conant and Marea’s Michael White. There are even food trucks with a variety of global cuisines parked in front of the Armory, for those who dream of traveling to Austin!

The Lexington Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue, Friday through Sunday, tickets available through Ticketmaster, information can be found at travelandleisure.com/promo/globalbazaar.

A Cuban? Never! “You’re too young to remember, but Ken Aretsky almost went to prison for that!” Mr. Nieporent said, referring to the proprietor of midtown’s Patroon whose well-stocked humidor was raided by customs agents back in 1998.

“[Publicist] Jennifer Baum has arranged for so many of my peeps to be interviewed over there, I have to smoke,” Mr. Nieporent explained, pointing to a tented red carpet area, where fellow culinary heavyweights Daniel Boulud, Jacques Pepin, and a George Hamilton-level tanned Stephen Starr, among others, were lined up for photos and interviews before the start of the 2009 James Beard Foundation Awards.

“This is not the Tribeca Film Festival!” Mr. Nieporent shouted. “One at a time!”

Hosted this year by the actor Stanley Tucci, co-star of the upcoming Julia Child biopic Julie & Julia, the annual Oscars of food invariably draws an eclectic mix of young attractive publicists in slinky gowns and lots of older fat guys in suits--and at least one wearing overalls and a Paul Reubens-style red bowtie. Chef Mario Batali showed up in a tux and bright, traffic-cone orange Crocs.

“I love this event,” said the dapperly dressed Mr. Nieporent, sporting a pink bowtie and yet another (perhaps celebratory) cigar, still wrapped in plastic, protruding from his breast pocket. “It’s really the only time that the industry allows us to self-promote on such a large scale. So why not? Fashion does it, movies do it.”

There are those who take issue with the self-promotion. Fellow restaurateur Keith McNally, for one, previously denounced the flashy ceremony as “ludicrous.” The eccentric operator of Pastis, Balthazar, and the newly refurbished Minetta Tavern, didn’t show up for this year’s awards, despite his nomination for outstanding restaurateur.

“I’ve paid off a few of the judges so I’m probably a shoo-in at this point. NO!” Mr. McNally told the Transom via email. “Can’t be there as I’m working at Minetta Tavern all night. Hope you enjoy it. It’s probably more fun than I’m willing to admit.”

Competing with Mr. McNally for the foundation’s most businessy prize was Mr. Nieporent, who, prior to the ceremony, described it as arguably the most precious. “There’s got to be two dozen chef awards,” he said. “Chef of the north, chef of the south, chef of the east, chef of the west, rising star, falling star, whatever. There’s only one category for restaurateur. One! And the participants in that category, every single one is worthy.”

Mr. Nieporent and his Myriad Restaurant Group--who’ve opened 32 restaurants in 24 years, he noted--have earned numerous James Beard nominations in recent years, though he lamented, “like in the Kentucky Derby, my horse finished last.” (He hasn't won since Nobu took outstanding restaurant honors in 1995.)

His newly opened Corton was also in the running this year for best new restaurant, though, from the outset, he pointed to maverick chef David Chang’s Momofuku Ko as “the Derby favorite.” (Turned out later, he was right.)

Mr. Chang and his self-described band of “young punks” soon arrived in the standard style, aboard a big rented party bus. (Just the single bus this time, not two like last year.) Chef Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 also deboarded the bus, clutching a plastic cup half full of liquid and otherwise stuffed with limes. “Will you sign my ticket?” the mockingly star-struck Mr. Dufresne asked his pal Mr. Chang for an autograph.

A number of other prominent cooks had been invited to board Mr. Chang’s bus of debauchery but declined. “I was shocked that he invited us, to be honest,” said Scott Conant, whose new eatery Scarpetta was also competing for honors against Mr. Chang’s Ko. “I’m here with my son and my wife and I don’t know if I want to expose them to the Chang party bus,” added Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio.

Inside, the awards show would drag on for nearly four hours, as various presenters repeatedly joked about all the food awaiting ravished attendees afterward in the lobby.

“People are so hungry, Lorraine Bracco is biting my ear behind me,” quipped Mr. Nieporent, finally taking the stage to accept his long-awaited medalion for outstanding restaurateur at about 9:30 p.m. (The show started at 6.) “Excuse me one second,” he told the crowd, “I’m Twittering. Don’t you hate that shit? You know, somebody twitted me that, in the time that we’ve been here, [Nashville restaurateur] Jack Arnold and his wife had another kid.”

Mr. Nieporent, who later hosted an after-party at his Midtown spot Nobu 57, had a strange feeling that he was going to win, he said. “You know why? My wife goes to bed very early. The lights were out. I tip-toed to the bed. And, suddenly, I stepped in dog shit--I swear to god! Two dogs! And, I screamed, ‘We’re going to win!’”

On Friday, May 1, the 48-year-old operator of acclaimed midtown eateries Alto and Convivio will debut his latest effort, Marea, an Italian-style seafood spot in the former San Domenico space at 240 Central Park South, with a splashy party benefiting the charity Citymeals on Wheels.

The new restaurant, outfitted from floor to ceiling with materials imported from Italy, is Mr. Cannon’s third venture with replacement chef Michael White, who’s turned out to be a more-than-capable backup. (Last October, New York Times critic Frank Bruni awarded Mr. White three stars at Convivio—a full one-star improvement over the Tudor City Place restaurant’s prior incarnation, L’Impero.)

The confident Mr. Cannon fully expects more of the same at Marea, considering how well things have been going so far with Mr. White.

“We came from similar experiences,” Mr. Cannon told the Daily Transom. “He had a situation with his partner, Steve Hanson, and couldn’t work with him. And I had I situation with my partner and I couldn’t work with him. And we kind of fell into each other.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Cannon couldn’t say enough good things about his current partner: “He’s a great guy. He’s classically trained. He’s incredibly creative and incredibly passionate. His motivations to do what he does are solely like my motivations in that we love food, we love eating. Like, when we go to Italy together, it’s like two 4-year-olds in a toy store. We’re just having fun the whole time. And, yeah, my wife hates us. I think both of our wives hate us because it’s like, ‘You call this a job!’”

Meanwhile, that pesky matter with the former chef, Mr. Conant, is finally over. The two culinary heavyweights settled their long-standing legal battle on March 13, according to court papers.

The pair had parted ways amicably enough in March 2007. “The whole thing with Scott, when we separated, was totally civil and good and done very well and quietly. No one knew it was happening,” Mr. Cannon said.

But things soon unraveled. In a 2008 interview with the trade publication New York Restaurant Insider, Mr. Conant was quoted associating his former business partner with “the Peter Principle, where people rise to their level of incompetence.” (Full disclosure: The Observer’s August 2008 profile of Mr. Conant was also later submitted into evidence.)

As a result, Mr. Cannon stopped sending deferred-compensation checks to his ex-chef, with his lawyer arguing that such “disparaging and defamatory remarks” violated a non-disparagement clause included in the estranged duo’s legal separation agreement.

Mr. Conant then sued, claiming that Mr. Cannon had violated the agreement himself, by criticizing his former chef’s cooking style in an interview with Alto Cucina Inc. as “too refined. With dishes like his hamachi with ginger oil he strayed too far.”

This past December, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge O. Peter Sherwood ruled that “neither [of them] met their respective burdens,” according to court papers.

In some ways, Mr. Cannon blamed himself for how things turned out.

“Part of the reason I’m in the position I’m in right now with my ex-chef is that I never really sought press,” he told the Daily Transom. “I never really got any notoriety or any reputation or anything. For me, it was always about the restaurant doing well and that was it. And, you know, the nature of the business in the last 25 years has been very chef-driven. … A lot of the reason we split up was because, basically, leverage. In any relationship, there’s leverage, either with your wife or whomever. In this situation, it was with a chef, and the chef felt that, because I was getting no notoriety, that he could do whatever he wanted. So things happened that led to the whole thing falling apart.”

Mr. Conant, now the owner of two Scarpetta restaurants in Manhattan and Miami, told the Daily Transom: “I’m sorry to hear that’s his perspective on the relationship. It’s been two and a half years. At the end of the day, I have real affection for Chris. I’m proud of what he’s doing, not only for him and his family, but for Italian food in general.”

Literally, in this case: beloved former French bistro Cocotte in Park Slope is being converted into some type of red-sauce joint, described simply as an "Italian restaurant," according to some new signage posted on the premises.

Cocotte, one of this author's favorites in the neighborhood, was suddenly shuttered back in February, with chef and co-owner Bill Snell blaming stiff competition along Fifth Avenue, the Slope's premier restaurant row.

Apparently, it’s working. After a nasty split with partners in two uptown restaurants last year, Mr. Conant, 37, has returned with a vengeance, opening his own Italian restaurant, Scarpetta, to rave reviews on May 13. On July 30, he received an enthusiastic three stars from The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, causing an immediate uptick in business. “Fuggedaboutit,” Mr. Conant said the other day over a lunch of his best dishes. “It’s awesome. Go look at my books tonight and yesterday. It’s August and we’re killin’ it—just killin’ it. Spectacular!”

There has also been some unwelcome attention. “A couple of weeks ago, we had a vice squad show up,” Mr. Conant said. “About 20 cops, the Building Department, the State Liquor Authority, the Health Department, the Fire Department—you name it. … I was horrified. They just took over the bar, putting flashlights in customer’s faces. … It was four days after our New York magazine review came out, so we were jamming and completely overwhelmed. The kitchen was a mess.

“The lieutenant came up to me and I said, ‘Listen, man, this is a three-star restaurant.’ He was like, ‘What do you mean?’”

Authorities had mistakenly thought they were raiding Gin Lane, the boozy nightspot that previously occupied the new Scarpetta space.

But one might just as easily misinterpret the confused cop’s remark as: Three stars? Italian? Really?

New York City has long overflowed with red sauce, but few high-minded foodies ever considered it haute cuisine. For years, fine dining meant French: La Caravelle, Lutece, Le Cirque. And, later, fusion: Jean-Georges, etc. Yet over the past decade or so, Italian’s fresh, lusty flavors have increasingly muscled into three-star territory.

“I’m way too modest to say that Italian is the new French,” Mr. Conant said.

But still, the facts speak for themselves. There were a few respectable Italian eateries in New York at the time of his arrival in 1990. Born in Waterbury, Conn., Mr. Conant cited Coco Pazzo and San Domenico, where he interned as a student at the Culinary Institute of America. But it wasn’t until Mario Batali burst onto the scene with Babbo in 1998 and subsequently brought his distinctive brand of cooking to television audiences around the country that Italian food seemed to finally turn that corner.

“I think it added a new level of credibility,” Mr. Conant said. “It became approachable for the person sitting at home watching TV and saying I can do that. I can make fresh pasta like that. … It just became cool. Mario’s a cool guy. People wanted to cook like him. People wanted to eat like him.”

The good-looking Mr. Conant, whom GQ food critic Alan Richman has called “probably second only to [Batali] as New York’s favorite Italian chef,” now seems poised to become Molto Mario’s heir apparent.

“Everybody would love to have that restaurant that’s 10 years old at this point and they’re still booked a month in advance,” Mr. Conant said of Babbo. “Everybody wants to be that guy. Who wouldn’t?”

Another Scarpetta is already slated to open inside Miami's Fountainebleau Hotel this November. 

The expansion of the brand might seem awfully quick. But he’s had plenty of time to plan after abruptly quitting his posts at Alto and L’Impero last year.

Mr. Conant caused quite a stir upon explaining his split with owner Chris Cannon to New York Restaurant Insider magazine: “There is such a thing as the Peter Principle, where people rise to their level of incompetence. And it just became clear to me that maybe I was associated with a group that was in that category.”

He has since tried to smooth things over, complimenting his replacement, chef Michael White, in an interview with the New York Post and telling this reporter, “Those restaurants were great and they’re still great—I’m just not a part of them anymore.”

After the split, Mr. Conant took some time off to ponder his next move. He consulted on a new restaurant in the Hamptons, got married to pet-accessory mogul Meltem Bozkurt in Turkey, honeymooned in Tahiti, and spent a lot of time on his laptop, plotting out ideas for his own restaurant over glasses of red wine, Bob Dylan songs playing in the background.

“Ultimately, what I came up with was this space,” he said of Scarpetta, which is located on the edge of the meatpacking district at 355 14th Street, with a marble-topped bar, brown-leather banquettes and a retractable glass roof. He described the intended vibe as “urban Milan meets rustic Tuscany.”

Mr. Bruni wasn’t particularly pleased with the décor, but the food—ah, the food! “Is any other chef coaxing more or better from it than he?” he raved of Mr. Conant’s work with the tomato. And the spaghetti? “[I]t stacked up against any spaghetti al pomodoro I’ve had in Italy,” Mr. Bruni gushed.

It’s a simple recipe that the chef has been making for years. “Frankly, when I was single, I’d get dates with this dish,” Mr. Conant said.

And the ladies are still swooning, at $24 per plate.

“The spaghetti—you have no idea—it’s insane,” he said. “We sold 140 orders of spaghetti the week before the review. The week of the review, we were selling on average 75 orders a day.

“Speak of the devil!” he cried, as servers carried over platters of the lauded foodstuff.

The pasta is homemade. But the key is the sauce, Mr. Conant said: “Peel and seed tomatoes, cook ’em for 45 minutes, then put an infused olive oil inside it, which that fat content, I think, is really important for the palatability of it, the perfume. The oil consists of an infusion of basil, crushed red pepper and garlic. And that’s it. The idea is, we cook it in a big pot, so then when we heat the sauce up per order, we do it in a sauce pan so there’s a larger surface area, so that it still maintains its freshness. And then we just toss the pasta inside of it, finish it with a little bit of butter and a touch of Parmesan cheese, and then the last thing that goes into the pan is the first flavor, the basil.”

Mr. Conant said he was “undeterred” from using fresh tomatoes, despite a rumor of salmonella earlier this year.

“A raw tomato, if it’s ripe and beautiful, is almost a perfect product,” he said. “It has sweetness, it has acidity, it has texture. It has a combination of three different textures between the seeds, the flesh and the skin. There’s a lot of different things inside of that that makes it interesting.”

“It may be the perfect example of what I think my food is meant to be,” Mr. Conant said of his hallowed red sauce, “where you take something that’s a commodity, a staple, something that’s necessary from an Italian kitchen. My ideal is to just kind of elevate it a little bit.”

Not that he plans a whole-scale makeover of red-checkered tablecloth favorites: “The most important thing to me in this restaurant, I didn’t want meatballs,” Mr. Conant said. “I’m not a big fan of the meatball.”

cshott@observer.com

"It's not really in the meatpacking, it's on, you know what I'm saying?"

The former L'Impero and Alto cook's latest restaurant Scarpetta opened Monday evening in the former Gin Lane and old Village Idiot space at 355 West 14th Street, just east of Ninth Avenue.

"A lot of the core clientele, a lot of Upper East Siders and a lot of people from Uptown, they're not going to be kind of spooked by going too much into the meatpacking. Too far inside of it, it might scare 'em off. But because it's on it, they feel comfortable coming down.

"I looked everywhere," Mr. Conant said. "But I really wanted it to be a West Village restaurant. It's probably one of the last neighborhoods that is pure New York."

It's a changing neighborhood, certainly: With the new Apple Store moving in just across Ninth Avenue and long-standing neighborhood institutions Florent and Passerby, um, passing on, landlords have been asking upward of $500 per square foot for retail space in the area.

"We took over the existing lease, so we're not signing a new one--let's put it that way--but still, we pay a significant amount," Mr. Conant said of the roughly 2,500-square-foot former dive-bar space.

"I've never personally been in a restaurant space that has this much chutzpah," he said proudly. "In order to tap into that, you need to pay the proper lease."

By the looks of it, he also spent a pretty penny on renovations. The improvements include a retractable glass roof.

"From the middle, it splits. When it does, it's awesome. It's just completely open, so you get a nice breeze into the space."

There must be a band of elves with little fingers in Alto's kitchen, putting together such jewel-like food. An array of wonderful, thimble-sized dishes arrives at the table when you sit down: sashimi of sea scallops; tuna and yellowtail topped with an unctuous sea urchin and caviar emulsion; fluke with smoked paprika and orange and lemon segments; a serving of brandade no bigger than a quarter; and a crab consommé that hides a whole, peeled baby tomato at the bottom of its doll-sized cup.

Tiny agnolotti float in a cloud of Parmesan foam, laced with mushrooms smaller than a fingernail. A miniature lobster salad topped with slivers of shad roe bottarga accompanies a small white cup of squid ink "cappuccino," black as tar and foaming at the brim.

There is no sign outside the restaurant, which is tucked away in a midtown courtyard behind a piece of the Berlin Wall. A small bar at the entrance leads into a sleek, two-story space with a central mezzanine, enclosed with frosted glass, for private parties upstairs. Gray carpeting covers the floors, and the tables are set with white linen cloths, red velvet chairs and dark gray banquettes. The dining room is divided, like Gaul, into three parts, and the effect is odd. The middle section, directly under the mezzanine, is long and narrow, with a low ceiling and curtains along one side. It feels like the first-class dining car on a train, except for the two foot-high iron candlesticks that are secured on the end of each table like tapers in a medieval banquet. On either side of this room are two other dining areas, one with a double-height ceiling and rather bright recessed lighting beaming down from above. The walls are covered by rows of glass-enclosed wine bottles dramatically silhouetted by a whitish-blue glow that my companion one evening described poetically as "like the light at dawn when you've stayed up all night taking drugs."

In fact, dining here can be something of an out-of-body experience, what with the outsized Alice in Wonderland lampshades hanging over the two round tables on either side of the room; the intricate plates that need a jeweler's eyeglass to assemble; and the captains and sommeliers, who are dressed, as my friend put it, like a stockbroker's senior advisors on important transactions. The rest of the wait staff wear dark gray tunics subtly emblazoned with the restaurant's logo, and the service on all counts is flawless.

There's a separate pasta course on the prix-fixe menu, but apart from that the food here bears little resemblance to Italian food as most people know it. I would call it more haute European, with strong references to Italy, Germany and Austria. What could be more German than the combination of potato schupfnudeln (gnocchi-like pasta), roast loin of pork and caramelized cabbage? Mr. Conant uses freshwater fish such as pike, a moist filet served with spaetzle and pickled shallots on a bright swath of green pea purée striped with a line of Gaeta olive oil. Crispy speck and a foie-gras emulsion garnish a guinea hen cooked two ways: the breast poached in an olive oil bath, soft as butter; the roasted leg boned and stuffed with a mixture of the bird's liver, currants and almonds. Ravioli are served on a bed of delicately seasoned sauerkraut.

This food isn't as intellectual as it sounds. It's certainly original and innovative, even visionary, but like Mr. Conant's cooking at L'Impero, it's passionate and sensual. Where does he get his ideas? Venison bresaola, a neat line of seven perfect slices, arrives with ramps, fresh juniper, apples and a sprinkling of black powder on the plate that turns out to be made from burned spices. Ramps show up again in a sublime risotto, topped with roasted eel glazed with balsamic vinegar and chicken stock. Smoked trout comes with dollar-sized pancakes made with chickpea flour and chives, a refined version of Ligurian street food. A braised snail sits on top of a creamy puddle of polenta topped with porcini, white asparagus and preserved truffles.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who's eaten at L'Impero that the pasta here is terrific. Mr. Conant serves trennette, a long thin pasta, with raw spot prawns that are just barely cooked at the table when a hot sea-urchin froth is poured on them by the waiter. The raviolini, with buffalo ricotta in a light Parmesan broth with asparagus and peas, are ethereal. For the more adventurous, bigoli-strands of long whole-wheat pasta-are tossed in a robust financière sauce made with cockscombs and tripe.

Sommelier Eric Zillier, formerly of Veritas, created the wine list with Chris Cannon. It's wide-ranging and affordable, with interesting selections from the Alto Adige region as well as other parts of Italy and France. A red Muscat went beautifully with a ripe glop of Gorgonzola with pickled dates from the cheese menu.

Pastry chef Patti Jackson, who was previously at Le Madri, turns out an impressive, architectural array of desserts from Austria and Italy. The rhubarb strudel with roasted strawberries is outstanding. So is the Sacher torte with kumquat marmalade and crema fritta, scented with orange-blossom water. The meal winds up with a selection of inspired petits fours and chocolates and exquisitely crafted, colorful marzipan vegetables.

Eating at Alto is a thrilling, dizzying experience. If a four-course menu doesn't seem like enough, Mr. Conant offers his customers a seven-course and even a 20-course tasting menu. Bring your magnifying glass.

Whether this was the case or not, the open-necked shirts and casual sweaters seemed at odds with the 50's-style formality of the dining room, with its scalloped boudoir curtains, thick carpeting and dark green ultra-suede banquettes. The restaurant was redecorated a few months ago, and its walls are now covered with dark brown silk and lined with wine cabinets. The tables (those along the sides of the room are rather jammed together), are set with candles, white cloths and linen napkins folded in stand-up triangles, no less. Muzak tinkles away on the sound system and there is a TV over the bar.

No sooner had I sat down than my attention was diverted by four young men in dark suits who were seated at the next table. "He's got witnesses," said one of them. "He can nail him."

This made it rather hard to concentrate on the menu.

"There are things we're incapable of bringing out from a flow standpoint," said his colleague, somewhat obtusely.

Lawyers.

A friendly waiter, who wore a ponytail and carried one hand behind his back like an English butler, put down a basket of focaccia on the table and took our order.

The chef at Chianti, Scott Conant, is not an Italian, but a 27-year-old American who trained first at San Domenico and then at Il Toscanaccio with the master of Tuscan cooking, Cesare Casella. He stays firmly within tradition when it comes to the classic preparations and doesn't attempt to put together combinations for the sake of novelty. This is the sort of cooking you hope to find when you go to Tuscany. To start, I couldn't resist the marinated tuna (which replaced Alaskan salmon that day) with shavings of bottarga (pressed tuna roe), sprinkled with pearls of caviar. The rich taste of the tuna was cut by the strong, tangy roe, and the combination was extraordinary. Chunks of grilled octopus were lightly charred, chewy but tender, coated with a delicate olive oil. And the fritto misto, a pile of shrimp, calamari, artichokes, eggplant and zucchini in the lightest, most delicate herb-flecked batter imaginable, was one of the best I've had anywhere, including Italy. Also good was the fricassee of wild mushrooms with soft, creamy polenta, topped with grana padano and white truffle oil–my kind of food. Meanwhile, things were heating up at the next table.

"I don't like litigating in Federal District Court. They dance around the edge," said one young man, waving his fork in the air. "We gotta get tough."

His friend agreed. "Hey, this is the real world."

My real world by this time consisted of a special of the day, a plate of perfectly cooked, chewy orecchiette tossed with little chunks of bacon and broccoli di rape. Mr. Conant has a sure hand with pasta, from his simple homemade thin spaghetti served in a plum tomato and basil sauce to a special of pappardelle topped with a rich ragout of wild boar.

No self-respecting New York Tuscan restaurant these days is without a wood-burning grill, and Mr. Conant makes good use of his. The salmon, flavored with garlic, olive oil and fresh porcini, was crackling on the outside and moist and perfectly cooked within. I was a bit disappointed with the Black Angus Florentine steak, which didn't have a great deal of flavor, although it was cooked just right. It came with a rather sweet sauce of red wine and cassis flavored with apples, honey and juniper. I preferred the humongous veal chop, burnished, pink and juicy, served with crisp sweetbreads, mushrooms and caramelized shallots.

By the time dessert arrived, the lawyers were onto the subject of employee morale and looking around for their bill. Too bad they missed the fabulous cannoli, which were made with a delicate sesame tuile wrapped around a light, orange-scented mascarpone mousse. Also offered were a good crostata with plums and a pleasant apple tart with a thin crust. Biscotti, shaped like Olmec statues, came with a dark chocolate sauce for dipping.

I wondered whether the lawyers had been "walk-ins" or if they'd come all the way uptown from the Federal courthouse just for dinner. Chianti may feel like a neighborhood restaurant in many ways, but as far as the food is concerned, it's well worth a journey from any part of town.

Chianti

* *

1043 Second Avenue, at 55th Street

980-8686

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Expensive, Italian and American, with interesting Tuscan wines

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses lunch $9.75 to $17.25, dinner $13.75 to $28.50

Brunch: Sunday noon to 3 P. M.

Lunch: Sunday to Friday noon to 3:30 P.M.

Dinner: Sunday 5:30 P.M. to 10 P.M., Monday to Thursday to 11 P.M., Friday and Saturday to 11:30 P.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor