Space-Age Decor, Good Food at Blue Fin

Itty's moved so far away, so three agree to meet her halfway at Old Man Rafferty's in New Brunswick. Gotta like a place that lists two pages of desserts first on its menu. Families and dates dining. Rutgers folk holding up the bar. I know I'm in New Jersey because the waitress says, "Hi I'm Stacey. I'll be your server tonight." Angelina asks what year an offered wine is. "Um, I think it's 2000." "No, that couldn't be 2000 yet." Poor Stacey. And when she is alarmed that I've left over a bit of bland, thinly sauced spinach fettuccine with still-crisp red pepper and portobello, she urges, "Can I wrap that for you?" I look at the other plates on the table, they've been cleaned. Well, Itty left a sliver of salmon, but she gets a handicap. Days later Angelina will recollect, "That salmon was really good."

Our chairs are knocked into several times by the servers; the place is jammed at 6 o'clock. Angelina recounts, "We went from merlot to cab and now we're just zins." This seems to be the way of the world. I just had a luscious zin myself, why it seems like it was only yesterday...

Slow ripple dissolve to the new Blue Fin in Times Square, where a glass and a half of Russian River Valley '97 from Castle Vineyard ($12) is round with some weight to it, reminiscent of the pitcher of boysenberry syrup on the lazy susan at the pancake house.

Everyone on Blue Fin's staff is personable, nice. I am immediately mocked by two of them. Our coats are graciously taken and extra settings quickly cleared. We argue about why we got a great table at 8 p.m. with no reservations. I think it's her new haircut. She says, "No, they want people who look like you." But a scan of the room confirms they already have plenty of those.

Space-age seating and wood-look tables. They have the woven plastic placemats we used to have at home. A wall of thin rectangular mirrors, a mobile that looks like so many fishies caught up in a current and a white wave-patterned wall that is a backdrop to a floating staircase. Bread is brought. Arranged on a mesh trapezoid are a sea-salted ciabatta-type roll, a cheese crackerbread coated with sesame seeds and my favorite, a dark roll with slices of salty-sweet black olives.

Seems to be a one-to-one ratio of staff to patrons. It is initially difficult to distinguish the black-clad staff from the black-clad customers. The bar is younger and blonder. There is also a cushy bar area in the darker upstairs dining room with live jazz. And a sushi bar downstairs, behind which three chefs nonchalantly produce their masterpieces. One of which is the crackling shrimp with ginger curried mayonnaise ($8.50). Unnecessary soy sauce (low sodium or regular) and wasabi are served with it. But better to dip in the eye-opening spiced mayo and the provided squiggle of three-alarm hot sauce that threatens to spoil my palate for the subtleties of that zin. The shrimp are covered with little circus-peanuts-candy-colored cubes of panko-esque crunchy batter. How'd they do that?

On the menu, fewer entrees than I'd expect for this high-toned room; all seafood with two beef options. The main thing here seems to be the extensive raw bar and sushi selections. And the thickly leatherbound wine list is hefty to say the least. Our waitress admits she's not familiar with it yet. I like only slightly less than the zin an order of Moris Farms Morellino di Scansano '99 ($9), of Tuscan sangiovese grapes; smoky and so dry. How dry was it? It was so dry, it made Robert Redford's face look dewy. It was so dry it could have evaporated all the lip gloss on the Fox News Channel. It was so dry Christopher Guest was getting pointers from it.

An appetizer of crabcakes ($14) has a mushy texture, but is virtually all crab and tastes really summer-seashore crabby. It comes with tiny baby greens and a mild coral-tinged tartar sauce, over a potato-type salad of cubed celery root garnished with halved cherry tomatoes. Each bite of the celery root plays a cruel trick on your mouth: it looks like potato, it feels like potato, aww...this isn't potato.

My companion takes out a draft of a resume she is writing for me. She doesn't like my current one, "It's all full of that technical gobbledygook. Nobody can understand that stuff." I've written plenty of resumes for others, but have a procrastination problem when it comes to my own. She says, "I think I'll add 'Lounge Singer' down here." I search my memory but retrieve zero records. "But I've never been a lounge singer."

"I always thought you'd be a good lounge singer."

"That may be, but, generally, on a resume, you put down things you've actually done."

"Well who's going to know different?"

"So why stop there. I was also the chief designer for the Hubble telescope. And I starred on Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun. And remember when I was editor at Vogue?" She makes some more notes, "You've done photography too, right?"

"Yes, for Life magazine."

The Brittany salt-crusted big-eye tuna appetizer ($12) comes with a bed of slices of different kinds of winter radishes; magenta throughout, red-rimmed, black-rimmed. Visually intriguing, but you know, I think one or two slices of radish is enough radish for any dish. Also accompanied by more of the itsy-bitsy baby greens in a sweet Asian dressing. The three slices of tuna, while lusciously red on the inside, are dried out and flaking apart on the outside. Also the meat is a shade stringy. An entree of perfectly seared red snapper ($26) is just browned and comes with a complementary pool of green chive oil. It lies atop risotto with chunks of dense-fleshed shrimp and julienne-cut asparagus. The risotto's texture says home-cooked meal, but the flavor is too Campbell's Cream of Mushroom. My companion needs salt for the fish, I can barely lift the shiny metal shaker.

There are a number of dessert wines and a few ports. We forgo the $550 a bottle Robert Weil Eiswein from Alsace, and order coffee, which takes too long to arrive. It is full-bodied but sharp. A trio of Valrhona chocolate desserts ($9) is, as all of the dishes have been, a gorgeous presentation. A stream of orange creme anglaise winds along the plate for dipping. A nervy dessert chef, as Valrhona is the more difficult of the good chocolates to work with. The mocha pots de creme I find bland, like a soupçon of cake frosting. The extra-bitter chocolate tart is more interesting, its smooth filling spicy and dark. But the elegant milk-chocolate dome is a dream. Set atop chocolate crumbs with a too-thin layer of custard within, each bite is a chocolate puff of air. Comes adorned with a crescent of chocolate cookie and stabbed with a spike of striated white and dark chocolates. Other dessert options include a trio of creme brulees (which I think we've seen enough of), homemade ice creams and sorbets, a fancified apple cobbler a la mode and a toasted almond cake with sour cherries and Morello cherry sherbet. The waitress drops a spoon on me, no damage done.

Twenty percent is taken off our food bill as a preview discount. It's disconcerting to walk out of the sleek space and into the hubbub of Times Square. I feel a ping on my shoulder...

Quick ripple dissolve to find that Stacey has dropped a fork on me. Angelina is saying, "I want to get tested before getting pregnant." "Whuh?" "I might be a carrier of something." "Yeah, you're a carrier of high cheekbones." Stacey has drawn a smiley face for us on the check.

We walk from Albany St. to the Old Bay on Church, which has Cajun-themed food and music. The plates look and smell so good. Dang, I should have suggested we eat here. The cozy bar offers a solid list of microbrews including some from Victory and Heavyweight breweries. Sexy balloon glasses serve as mugs. If you finish a whole one of their fruity rum hurricanes, use the elevator up to the train track, you'll never negotiate the outdoor turning staircase. Cocktail prices are gentle compared to Manhattan so drink up. A good-looking group of Princeton townies comes in and settles against the back wall of the small bar. A couple of them want to know if I go to Rutgers. Maybe they need their vision checked, but it was nice, as I have a big birthday coming up this year. "No, I went to CMU." A tall one says, "I went to Lehigh. You know Lehigh?" "I was accepted to Lehigh but I didn't go there." Slam. He majored in engineering. I started in engineering. "Why'd you quit engineering?" "I couldn't bear to take a third semester of physics." "At Lehigh you would have only needed two semesters." Well, there was that small explosion in the digital lab too.

Later he offers, "Seeing that you're unemployed now, how wise do you feel was your decision to leave engineering?" Slam! "I don't have the head for it anyway." And there was that small explosion in the dorm from one of my homemade extension cords. "So why'd you ever think you could be an engineer?" "I didn't. I applied to all the colleges except the engineering school and they put me in engineering." Go Tech.

On the short walk to the station, we pass Nova Terra, where a Latin band plays for a dancing upscale, well-dressed crowd. Angelina, nose up against the window, mourns, "Ooooooh, we should have gone there." It does look like fun. Last train back Saturday night is 1:22 a.m. If you gird yourself for the interminable 44-minute ride, downtown New Brunswick makes for a viable and economical spot for dining, drinking and dancing with your far-flung friends. As an added bonus, you might even be mistaken for a coed.

Blue Fin, 1567 Broadway (47th St.), 918-1400.