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[Moira Hodgson] has been a staff food writer at the New York Times and Vanity Fair, and she's written several cookbooks, too.

  Vento Reinvents S&M Club, From Hellfire to Hearty Trattoria dining out withA breeze has run through what was once Hellfire in the meatpacking district. Vento, which means \"wind\" in Italian, is a casual trattoria that takes up three floors and an outdoor terrace of a red-brick 19th-century building shaped like the prow of a ship. The basement, once a stable, was one of the most notorious S&M clubs back in the 70's and 80's. Now it's a lounge called Level V, with exotic cocktails, a D.J. and a clientele dressed in miniskirts and flip-flops instead of dog collars and chains. While Fiamma sets out to be haute couture, [Vento] is Mr. [Stephen Hanson]'s off-the-peg budget line. There are two extremely talented chefs at the helm: Michael White from Fiamma, with Martin Burge (lately of Tribeca's Fresh) as chef de cuisine. Their aim is to provide the sort of simple, rustic food you would find in a homely trattoria in Italy. But this doesn't stop Vento from feeling like a moneymaking machine, packing in as many people as it can hold. The menu doesn't deviate from standard Italian fare, which would be fine were the food at least consistent. Alas, simple Italian cooking, which depends so much on the ingredients, has nothing to hide behind when it goes wrong; eating at Vento is like a game of roulette. The food, from a stressed and overextended kitchen, is hit-or-miss. Order the tortelli, squares of pasta filled with ricotta, and they arrive literally glued to the plate, topped with a sprinkling of favas and tasteless morels. (They seemed to have spent as much time under the heat lamp as the dogs in the spa across the street do on their carpets.) But what a difference between that dish and the casarecci! The latter are rolled short pasta, and these were perfectly cooked al dente and tossed in a rich cream sauce laced with strips of prosciutto, peas and truffle oil. I was amazed to get pasta this good in a restaurant that serves 300 people a sitting.

  I also felt queasy at the thought of spending the price of two round-trip tickets to England on just one dinner. O.K., so 90 percent of the fish is flown in from Japan (where, as everyone knows, a watermelon costs $50), but is it worth the expense? Masa Takayama is a celebrity chef who for years has had a devoted following at his tiny restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, which he sold before he moved to New York. Unlike most celebrity chefs, Mr. Takayama stays on the premises. If you sit at the sushi bar, you can watch the master at work, which is something to behold. The silently working sushi chefs, with shaved heads and loose- fitting black clothes, looked like Buddhist monks, and each one wielded a long, sharp steel sushi knife with a carved wooden handle. The fish was piled in a glass case in the middle of the work space. Mr. Takayama, center stage, was dressed in the traditional monk's gray-blue. He has a round, cheerful face and was chatting with an enthusiastic couple in their 40's, the man looking fresh off Wall Street in his striped shirt and tie. The rest of the audience consisted of two Pakistani businessmen and a perky young blonde with an older, balding date. She ordered a Coke. There was no uni, no kobe beef or truffles (and if there had been, our bill could have soared to $500 per person). It was certainly a wonderful meal, but too much money for one that included a great deal of mackerel. Next-door at Bar Masa, which doesn't take reservations, you can get dinner for two for about $200. But as far as Masa is concerned, while I appreciate Mr. Takayama's genius, it's not a restaurant I'll be going back to anytime soon, and certainly not if I can't sit at the bar. If I want great sushi in a more romantic atmosphere, I'll go to Jewel Bako or Megu.

  When I did return and ordered the roast breast of duck, I got pink, tender slices, cooked perfectly, but they were lost in a maelstrom of ingredients that included soba noodles, wild mushrooms, Chinese celery, chayote squash and curry sauce. It was as if the dish been made by someone clearing out the refrigerator who had thrown together everything he could find in one dish, just for the hell of it. The flavor of the lamb \"chump,\" a cut from the rear loin, was overwhelmed by a mint- yogurt sauce that tasted as though raw anchovies had been mixed into it. It came with grilled leeks and an oversalted polenta and goat cheese pancake topped with baby vegetables flavored with sumac. However, the venison, served with ginger-glazed carrots, rainbow chard and fig and walnut chutney, was very good, a study in simplicity by comparison. Public turns out some very good fish dishes, too. Plump sauteed sea scallops with creme fraiche and crisp green plantains are wonderful. Also first-rate was a special of the evening: a sashimi of pristine, fresh Spanish mackerel with sesame oil. A mixed- seafood ceviche is a pleasant Thai-accented concoction, made with young coconut, Thai herbs, crispy shallots and spicy coconut water. Glazed eel, alas, was not so good. Where was the eel? It was cut in bits lurking under a murky pile of salad greens, all tossed in a soy dressing. By candlelight, it was impossible to distinguish what you were eating. The huge, juicy Maya prawns were a better choice, with wok-fried black beans, asparagus, lump crab and a spicy tomato- chili jam. And there's a very good wine list of interesting New Zealand and Australian vintages to go with the food.

I'm glad I did. On a weeknight, Bivio can be as relaxed and pleasant as it is loud and hectic on the weekend. The welcome this time around was warm, and the service was not only friendly, it was efficient. Since the concept behind Bivio is a wine bar, there's an interesting choice of boutique wines (many of them by the glass) and a menu of small plates to be shared, in addition to main courses. One wall of the dining room is a blackboard with specials of the day chalked on, along with a list of charcuterie such as prosciutto di Parma, speck, duck prosciutto, bresaola and Italian cheeses. The food at Bivio is straightforward and simple; attention is paid to fresh ingredients of high quality. You can begin by sharing a plate of fried calamari, hot and crisp, albeit in a rather thick batter, or a plate of tuna tartare, de rigueur even in an Italian restaurant these days, cut in chunks and tossed in sesame oil with ginger and watercress. Asparagus is cooked au gratin, topped with prosciutto and parmigiano, and roasted artichoke has a bread stuffing; it's good and garlicky. There are several kinds of bruschetta, too (the one topped with the woolly tomatoes shouldn't be on the menu this time of year). Salads include a sprightly mix of fennel, arugula and slivers of parmigiana with blood oranges, and endive and watercress with pomegranate and a generous hunk of a creamy Gorgonzola.

  When the kitchen is on form, the food here can be very good. One of my favorite dishes was the grilled sardines. They were extremely fresh, perfectly cooked under a golden skin. Carpaccio of octopus and warm calamari with avocado and tomato were also good. But we fared less well with salads. When I ordered artichokes with white truffle oil, I expected them to be raw and cut in slivers in the traditional manner. They were slivered and raw, all right, but tossed with bits of greenery and shredded radicchio which so overwhelmed the artichokes with its bitterness that you couldn't really taste them at all. The dish wasn't bad, but I wouldn't order it again. Seafood salad was swamped by greenery, too, including a lot of frisee. It was a mess to look at, but the occasional pieces of seafood that lurked in the foliage, shrimp, calamari, octopus and mussels, were fresh and properly cooked. But it seemed to me that there was an awful lot of filler going into these salads. If there is one cuisine that has resisted \"improvements,\" so- called modern touches or fusion with the cuisine of other countries, it's Italian. I've seen chefs who can't leave well enough alone try to update a puttanesca sauce by adding Asian vegetables or invent a new pizza topping by throwing on some foie gras or raw fish. Forget it. The best Italian food is the simplest, and it's all about ingredients. Chef John De Lucie, who has worked at Oceana and Nick and Tony's Cafe, knows this and sticks with straightforward, familiar dishes. The kitchen offers a choice of seven pizzas and pastas and simple main courses such as lamb shank with polenta, chicken cooked under a brick and veal Milanese. The prices are right, too, with pizza and pasta priced around $12 to $15 and main courses between $19 and $25.

  Remember Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Two Bad Mice? While the owners were out, the mice broke into a doll's house in the nursery and tried to eat the food that was laid out on the dinner table. Well, I felt like one of those mice the other night, as I sat with a friend in the upstairs dining room of Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village. It's one of the tiniest restaurants I've ever seen, on two floors of an old carriage house. The ground floor is a pocket-sized oyster bar, and the dining room above, where we were ushered in for dinner, has just six tables. There were logs blazing in the fireplace, and through the mullion windows the pristine snow that lay on the sill seemed fake. I half-expected the face of a Beatrix Potter cat to appear at the window and a large paw to spear the fish from my plate. Ms. [Allison Vines-Rushing]'s Southern background shows in her thick, dark, peppery \"Prudhomme\" soup, made with turtles from Louisiana, and in the black-eyed peas that come with the rouget, which is not blackened but roasted. Barbecued lobster, buttery and juicy, arrives in a spicy sauce on a slice of toasted baguette. Quail, the right-sized bird for the diminutive dining room, is glazed with chicory (the stuff they put in coffee in New Orleans), stuffed with Swiss chard and served atop a bed of creamy grits. The chicory reminds me a little of Mexican mole. My companion, being male, ate his bird with a real-men-don't-eat-quail expression on his face. \"It's delicious, but I always find quail so fiddly,\" he said.

There are three kinds of soup on the menu at Rai Rai Ken. Shoyu ramen, the soup we saw in the film, is every bit as good as it looks and is the perfect light-yet-filling antidote to all the rich food eaten over the holidays. Shio ramen is a subtle, seafood-based noodle soup laced with the usual trimmings, bamboo shoots, boiled egg, roast pork, spinach, fish cake, dry seaweed. Miso ramen is much heartier, made with a thicker, yellowish broth based on soybeans. It's served with chicken, bean sprouts, cabbage, onion and clouds of dark brown things that at first I thought were roasted peanuts but turned out to be garlic chips, and it's quite spicy. All the ramen soups are topped with a forest of green chopped scallions, and at $6.95, the price is right. There's more to the menu at Rai Rai Ken than soup. Gyoza, fried dumplings stuffed with minced vegetables and pork, are browned in oil and served very hot. The dough is delicate and soft and the dumplings are greaseless. Cha-han (fried rice) is a wonderful, zesty melange of shrimp and scallops or pork with eggs. Menma, which my son felt was an acquired taste, is made with marinated bamboo shoots that have a springy texture and taste like a slippery sliced mushroom, served with seaweed, red pepper mix and a shower of scallions. Rai Rai Ken must go through bushels of scallions each week, since they show up on just about everything. You can also get side dishes such as kimchee (Korean pickled cabbage), takuwan (pickled radish with dried bonito) and the now-ubiquitous Japanese snack edamame (boiled soybeans).

Order the mixed grill ($25) and, instead of great chunks of meat on a cutting board, you get an elegant Moroccan-inspired presentation. A heap of tiny bias-cut merguez conceals a tender lacquered squab breast and a glazed chicken leg underneath; on the side is a small bowl of curried Israeli couscous tossed with shredded braised lamb. The plate of paella, which contains chicken, sausage, lobster and clams, is rimmed with mussels. The seasonings are delicate, and the rice, the most important part, is perfect: each grain firm yet creamy. It's just the right portion and you can eat the lot. You can jump all over the world with this menu. For $10, you can get a lovely tart filled with fresh chanterelles and topped with feta and baked tomato. For $5, there's a small platter of tiny roasted Brussels sprouts served with a parmesan crisp and sprinkled with sage and toasted walnuts. It was a revelation to my friends, who had grown up in England and were used to Brussels sprouts cooked until they were gray and soggy. A spicy salad of green papaya tossed with lime, cilantro and peanuts was pleasantly tart and crunchy. A little of it went a long way, this was certainly a dish for sharing. Desserts are priced at $5 and, while they all look great, they vary in taste. Creme brulee is served in a deep dish under an orange- lavender froth, but the vein of caramel running through it made it too sweet for me. Chocolate Napoleon consisted of a tough, bitter chocolate pastry layered with a bland, bitter chocolate filling. Bourbon bread pudding was on the dull side, but the caramelized pear toffee cake, dark, moist and treacly, was wonderful, with sour-cream ice cream and spiced almonds. I can still taste it.

Co-owner and chef Adam Roth describes the food as New Japanese American, which means, in addition to exotic sushi and sashimi, there are dishes like monkfish liver pate, abalone steamed in sake and grilled ostrich. A delicious \"spider\" roll is made with soft- shell crab and avocado, and yellowtail sashimi comes with a pomegranate dressing. Sui has great ambitions, and many of the dishes the kitchen turns out are wonderful, especially the sushi and sashimi. A good deal of thought has gone into the look of the food, too. Three kinds of ceviche arrived on a giant black plate that was almost the size of our table. It was decorated with a bamboo leaf and a red lobster shell and set with three kinds of glasses: a beaker, a martini glass and a wine glass. We took off the glasses and sent away the plate because it didn't fit on the table with the other dish we'd ordered, which was about the same size. The ceviches, lobster, fluke and scallops, were strange. Fluke with bean sprouts and grapefruit is an odd combination, and the discovery of cocktail onions at the bottom of one glass was not a pleasant surprise. There's an uneven quality to the food at Sui. Peeky-toe crab pot stickers were chewy and tasteless; even the orange chili plum sauce they were served with failed to perk them up. On the other hand, the pan-seared diver scallops were nicely glazed and juicy, and went beautifully with the ruby grapefruit and soy-flavored mustard. Crunchy tiger shrimp were also good, rolled in crushed peanuts and served on skewers with a fresh mango salsa.