Bootlegger's Tap, and a Door Swings Open

“As theater, the new upstairs dining room at the '21' Club is hard to beat. It's a club within a club, a small, windowless room sealed off from the downstairs social swirl and ruled by its own peculiar rituals, meant to suggest a vanished world of privilege and high style.

The design of the room, called the Upstairs at '21'. picks up the theme with four huge murals, painted by a Brooklyn artist named Wynne Evans, that depict Times Square in winter, Central Park in summer, Rockefeller Center in spring and Grand Army Plaza in fall. The scenes, set in a vague never-never land of Manhattan glamour, circa 1935, have the airless, static quality of an allegorical painting by Poussin, treating the New York of the Astor Roof and the Thin Man films as mythic material.

 The period allusions extend even to the rolled and tucked leather upholstery that makes the banquettes look like the back seat of a Pierce-Arrow. 

…A perfect square of seared loup de mer, firm and moist, was one of the finest pieces of fish I've eaten in the last month or so. It came with a surprising but excellent Asian pasta, ravioli stuffed with sweet red kuri squash…Succulent chunks of lobster, baked in a small casserole, come out of the oven like a deluxe shepherd's pie folded into a very spicy red pepper stew. On the side is a tangle of homemade pasta noodles with feathery fines herbes worked into the dough.

The service matches the food. It's a little florid, very stylized and in the end as fascinating as the murals. ''I've chosen a Vouvray to go with the scallops,'' the sommelier announced one evening. ''It has an off-dry quality that tames the mussel jus and calms the salt.'' I looked for a hint of irony and failed to find it. By my third visit to the restaurant, I began to regard the performance at '21' as something akin to Restoration comedy, an exercise in high style that, in a way, depends on a certain kind of self-consciousness to produce its effects. I enjoyed it, and I came to regard the waiters, in that hermetically sealed little world, as my personal household staff.

There's no question that '21' and Mr. Blauberg want to create something special in the upstairs dining room. It's hard to imagine a more romantic setting, or a more heartfelt love song to Manhattan...”

The Upstairs at '21'
** [Rating: Two Stars]

ATMOSPHERE - Globally influenced new American cuisine, served in an intimate room on the second floor of the '21' Club.
SOUND LEVEL - Quiet.
RECOMMENDED DISHES - Sea scallop sashimi with mussel dressing; venison with huckleberry syrup and crushed-wheat risotto; spicy lobster gratin; chocolate-hazelnut wafer.
SERVICE - Highly attentive, bordering on theatrical.
WINE LIST - Extensive list, mostly French and Californian, drawn from the '21' cellar, with about 20 wines by the glass.
HOURS - Dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
PRICE RANGE - Three course prix fixe, $68.
CREDIT CARDS - All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS - Ramp at entrance. An elevator near the bar serves the upstairs dining room and restrooms.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN
(None) Poor to satisfactory
* Good
** Very good
*** Excellent
**** Extraordinary

Ratings reflect the reviewer's reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.

Kindly reproduced from the New York Times.