"Ghujjia," he replied promptly.

"You aren't from India, are you?" my friend asked.

"No. Moscow."

"Are there any Indian restaurants in Moscow?"

The waiter looked surprised. "Oh, yes! We used to be friends!"

I have never been to Moscow, and certainly never thought of it as a city of curry houses. I picture them full of barrel-chested men with close haircuts in leather jackets, knocking back vodka and seeing who could wolf down the hottest vindaloo.

The executive chef at Tamarind comes by way of a place equally hard to imagine as a creative hotbed of Indian food: Memphis, Tenn. Raji Jallepalli-Reiss, who is originally from the south of India, built a considerable reputation there for the innovative fusion cuisine served at her 12-year-old restaurant, Raji's. Now she's brought her style of regional Indian cooking to Tamarind, which opened recently in a former Woolworth's warehouse in the Flatiron district.

The restaurant, owned by Avtar Walia, a partner in Dawat, is cool and modern in its design. Done up in white, beige and pale grays, it has a skylight, marble and mahogany floors, and tables set with votive candles. At the front door is a floor-to-ceiling wrought-iron wall hanging of dancers' silhouettes. The people sitting on the stools at the large, square bar are thrown into silhouette by the back-lit panels that surround its base. They sat up taller when Uma Thurman came in the night we were there, looking for a takeout menu. Framed Indian textiles and mirrors hang on the walls, and by the entrance to the main dining room is a glassed-in kitchen with tandoori ovens where you can see the chefs at work, shaping dough and skewering quail. At either end of the room, semiprivate curved banquettes sit on platforms that look like little houses, bordered by trellises screened from one another with translucent fabric. (Though these niches are attractive, the tables are rather big and it's hard to hear the person at the other end.) The back wall is bedecked with rows of wooden clappers, which are hung around the necks of cows in India, each embedded with a piece of colored glass.

Ms. Jallepalli-Reiss combines classic French techniques with the spices traditionally used in Indian cooking (just as French chefs, conversely, love to use exotic Asian seasonings in their food). She doesn't juxtapose unexpected ingredients in startling ways like the chef at Tabla (e.g., pomegranates with apples, star anise and sweetbreads), or go the Escoffier route with sorbets between courses and truffle oil on biryani, as they do at Ada. But she does use wine and herbs in her sauces. Tamarind's extensive menu is a combination of the familiar (lamb vindaloo, chicken tikka), regional dishes and the chef's inventions, such as tandoori venison with cranberry sauce and toasted fenugreek. It is, however, one of those menus that makes everyone at the table throw up their hands and say, "Someone else please do the ordering!" It's hard to tell what is going to be good and what is not, for the food is uneven. One night the waiter steered me to the lamb vindaloo, and I capitulated resentfully, thinking it a dull choice. But I didn't regret it; in fact, I've never had better. The sauce wasn't particularly fiery, but the spices were complex. On the other hand, the venison, though tender, had a mushy texture.

Tamarind is an Asian fruit, a long, dark-brown pod containing small seeds and a sweet-sour pulp. In cooking, it functions like lemon juice, and it is to Ms. Jallepalli-Reiss as fleur de sel is to the French chef who has a restaurant named for this salt just two blocks away. As a sauce, tamarind provides a tart foil to the Calcutta specialty raj kachori, a delicate, crisp patty shaped like a flying saucer and stuffed with fresh chickpeas, yogurt and mint. There is a marvelous, robust red "soup" of lentils, minced vegetables and garlic that is served with the roast Cornish hen, making up for the fact that the bird is a little dry. Smoked tamarind adds another dimension to konju pappas, juicy shrimp cooked in a spicy coconut sauce with curry leaves.

Traditional Indian aloo tikiyas–spicy, meltingly soft potato cakes beneath a crunchy exterior–are seasoned with ginger, turmeric, green chilis and mango powder, and served with tamarind and mint chutney. Three bhajias, or fritters–one made with a whole spinach leaf, another with sliced plantain and the third with homemade cheese–are subtle and light. But the vegetable samosas are a bit doughy.

The tandoori oven has been the scene of many a culinary crime, yielding shriveled bits of red fish or meat that even the most trenchant yogurt marinade has failed to protect. The results at Tamarind are mixed. One of the best dishes is noorani kebab, a creation of the chef: boneless pieces of tender chicken breast flavored with saffron. Tandoori scallops, marinated in yogurt and garam masala, are juicy but need salt. The mixed grill, however, is not stellar.

A Sanskrit verse states that if people eat animals in this world, animals will eat them in the next. Whether or not you subscribe to this ominous notion, it's worth trying some of Tamarind's wide selection of vegetarian dishes. The lotus-root dumplings filled with farmer's cheese are terrific, as is the spiced okra, cut in slices and simmered with onion, tomato and dried mango. Lemon rice mixed with curry leaves, mustard seeds, peanuts and lentils goes wonderfully with all of the dishes. Among the more unusual breads are nan stuffed with a bright red mixture of tamarind seeds and raisins, and rosemary nan, served with a small bowl of olive oil.

Many Westerners find Indian desserts a bit too sweet and redolent of the perfume bottle. Not here. The ice creams–mango, kulfi (pistachio) and ginger–are rich and creamy without being the least cloying. The rasmalai, awkwardly described as "sweet, spongy cottage-cheese dumplings," have a pleasant sour flavor that goes nicely with cardamom and rosewater. Gulab jamun– doughnuts made from dry milk and honey–are served hot and dipped in sugar. They're great. The ghujjia, the remnants of which were identified by our Muscovite waiter, is a pastry stuffed with semolina, raisins, coconut and cashews. It comes not with tamarind but a lemon sauce.

Unlike London (and, presumably, Moscow), New York has woefully few good Indian restaurants. Tamarind joins the ranks of its best.

Tamarind

* *

41-43 East 22nd Street

674-7400

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Mostly French and American, reasonably priced

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Executive complete lunch $15 and $17; dinner main courses $15 to $26

Lunch: 11:30 a.m. To 2:45 p.m.

Dinner: Sunday through Thursday 5:30 to 11:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 5:30 to midnight

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

"It's terrible," he said, nearly spitting, during an interview on March 30, the day he received the eviction notice. Sitting in a barber's swivel chair in his narrow, windowless shop on the Woolworth's mezzanine floor, he drew furiously on a Marlboro Light and recalled how mayors from Abe Beame to Rudolph Giuliani used to dash across the street for a haircut. Aging pictures of Mr. Oliva taking his scissors to Ed Koch and Joe Torre hung on the wall behind him; a Playboy magazine sat on a table nearby.

Time was, he said later, when "the Woolworth Building was the cream of the crop, the salt of the earth. It was family and they knew how to treat people."

But these days, every office-hungry dot-com wants to be in lower Manhattan. Signature office buildings are being reborn as high-end condos. And suddenly, the Woolworth Building is hot.

Mr. Oliva had already seen Harry's at the Woolworth, where restaurateur Mario Cascone did a healthy business with the City Hall lunchtime crowd, close for good on March 3. Developer Steve Witkoff is negotiating with four "world-class" restaurants, one of which will move into Mr. Cascone's ground-floor space, sources said.

Mr. Oliva had heard that all the law firms on the upper stories were getting the boot, too. Mr. Witkoff plans to convert the office space in the top 29 floors of the 60-story building into high-priced apartments.

The last straw was when he heard Starbucks was moving into a vacant storefront downstairs.

But his landlord, Mr. Witkoff, the highly-leveraged, swaggering, reportedly pistol-packing Bronx native, has big plans for the soaring neo-gothic skyscraper that writer Edwin A. Cochran called, in 1916, "a monument to small things." He's bringing in a roster of high-tech tenants, and plans to remake its upper stories as an address for the filthy rich.

Salt-of-the-earth tenants, meanwhile, are fast going the way of the five-and-dime.

The tallest inhabited building in the world when it opened in 1913, the Woolworth Building was already something of a shabby relic by the time Mr. Witkoff bought it, for $122 million, in 1998.

Sure, its terra cotta exterior was still resplendent, and its lobby, with its gargoyles and vaulted mosaic ceilings, a gem. Upstairs, however, the Woolworth's dry-goods business was in its death throes, and the building's other longtime occupants ran toward personal injury and criminal-defense lawyers. Rents were in the range of $20 per square foot per year, said Brad Gerla, the managing director at Insignia-ESG, who's handling commercial leasing for Mr. Witkoff.

At the time Mr. Witkoff bought the Woolworth, the price he paid was widely scoffed at as a top-of-the-market folly. There were questions as to whether he had the financing to close the deal.

Mr. Witkoff has proved the naysayers wrong. With high-technology firms anchoring the first 30 floors, which had been Woolworth's offices, at rents of $45 a square foot, he's already projected to recoup his investment.

Now, Mr. Witkoff's team of architects are drawing plans to convert the building's 30-story crenolined tower into apartments with majestic views, and surely just-as-majestic pricetags. The crowning piece of the $20 million project, as conceived, will be a penthouse triplex with access, via an antique glass elevator, to the building's long-closed observation deck.

Tinkering with architect Cass Gilbert's masterpiece is not something Mr. Witkoff and his associates are undertaking lightly.

"This is a building that, when it was done in 1913, became the symbol not only for New York but for the world of what a skyscraper should be," said Roger Duffy, a partner at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who is working on the project.

All About Greed?

Others, however, are less sure of Mr. Witkoff's good intentions.

"I think that Mr. Woolworth must be turning over in his grave at the thought of his building being made into something he never intended it to be," said Joyce DeBlasio, office manager for the firm of DeBlasio, Figman, Epstein, LaRocca. (Her husband, Peter, is a partner.) Last month, she received a notice giving her 60 days to vacate, and she's now looking for office space in other downtown buildings. "We've been tenants in this building-my husband's been here since 1958. We knew all the management people in the building, we had very good relationships with them. This is a whole different ball game now. This is all about greed, money."

Mr. Gerla countered that most of the law firms had been given the opportunity to rent space, albeit at higher rents in other parts of the building. The old tenants' dissatisfaction, he said, was just a symptom of their discomfort with changing times.

"You're going to get that wherever you go," he said, adding after a moment, "They're lawyers."

It's debatable, too, whether Mr. Woolworth would really be spinning in his grave at the thought of Mr. Witkoff's renovations. Looking at the scrappy young developer's rapid rise from owner of a few Bronx tenements to real estate mogul, he might see a bit of himself.

Woolworth built an empire from a single "Five and Ten Cent" store in the town of Lancaster, Pa., and made himself a multimillionaire. Piqued by the attention paid to the Metropolitan Life Tower, a 50-story classical building on Madison Square Park, he was determined to make his skyscraper the tallest in the world. Goldman Sachs & Company refused him a mortgage on the building. No matter. Woolworth's simply delved into his vast coffers and paid for the building with $13.5 million of his own fortune.

He realized his dream-at 792 feet, the Woolworth Building would not be surpassed for 17 years, when the Bank of Manhattan building at 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building passed it in quick succession.

On April 24, 1913, Mr. Woolworth hosted a lavish opening reception on the building's 27th Floor. In a speech that night, the Rev. S. Parkes Cadman christened the building "The Cathedral of Commerce." The nickname stuck, even after the Woolworth Corporation's declining fortunes made it seem ironic.

In 1998, with its last 400 stores closing, Woolworth's shed its name-it's now the Venator Group-and sold its flagship building to Mr. Witkoff. Renowned for his tough-guy persona, Mr. Witkoff had by that time amassed a real estate portfolio that included the Daily News building and the Goldman, Sachs building at 10 Hanover Square.

A Close Call

He borrowed heavily to do so-sometimes as much as 98 percent of the purchase price, the Wall Street Journal reported in a scathing 1998 profile. When the debt crunch hit, the deal for the Woolworth Building nearly came apart.

But Mr. Witkoff scraped together $25 million, then talked Venator into knocking $20 million off the original sale price of $142 million.

The result, said Newmark & Company Real Estate Inc. executive vice president William Cohen (who wasn't involved with the deal), was a "smashing success."

The building's commercial floors are already fully leased. Internet marketing firm Xceed is taking four floors. Organic.com took almost 200,000 square feet. The advertising firm Fallon McElligott leased two floors.

"When we took over the building, our marketing strategy was to grab the hip companies," said Mr. Gerla, the leasing agent. "We rewired the building, and the whole marketing campaign was really toward the e-commerce companies. The building was dubbed in its day the 'Cathedral of Commerce.' Well, we changed it to the 'Cathedral of E-Commerce.'"

Mr. Witkoff declined to gloat about his success, but conceded that he was "nervous" when it appeared his lenders would back off. "But me and my partners, we never swayed from wanting to buy the thing, because $125 a square foot for this particular property seemed to be a very good buy."

Mr. Cohen, the Newmark executive, suggested, though, that success might have less to do with financial acumen than market timing.

"As far as I'm concerned with regard to the Woolworth project, the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars," he said.

Mr. Witkoff declined to elaborate on plans for the building's conversion. But Costas Kondylis, a residential architect working on the project, said some floors, which run from 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, might be marketed as single apartments. All the floors-as insisted by Mr. Woolworth-have high ceilings, up to 19 feet.

Whoever buys the 5,000 square-foot top-floor triplex will get exclusive use of a four-foot wide observation deck that rings the pyramid-shaped crown of the building.

There are plans for a spa and a small movie theater, to attract film industry buyers, downstairs. Mr. Landstrom, the manager, said apartments would also be marketed toward Silicon Alley millionaires.

Then there's the view.

"The view is simply awesome," said Pam Liebman, president of the Corcoran Group, who was shown the top of the building recently. "When I stood on the top of that building … I felt like I was standing on a piece of history and on the top of the world."

Given the ever-rising market, the building's location, and historic significance, those involved with the project declined to speculate how much such apartments could fetch on the open market.

"Will the Chrysler Building ever become a residential building?" Mr. Duffy asked. "Will the Empire State Building? No. This is a chance to live in one of the top three buildings in the city."

One person involved said, however, that preliminary price estimates range from about $6 million to more than $12 million for the penthouse.

Meanwhile, what of Mr. Oliva, the barber? He said he's considered legal action, but is not optimistic. He'll probably retire.

"I'm 66," he said. "I'm too old to be knocking on doors. And anyway it's a dying era for barber shops. It's all unisex now-they don't know how to use scissors anymore."