TABLES FOR TWO.

ZUCCO: LE FRENCH DINER -- 188 Orchard St., near Houston St. (212-677-5200)--Don't despair if, in looking through the windows of this tiny restaurant on the Lower East Side, it appears completely full. Zucco, the wiry and goateed owner, might size you up (girth plays a factor) and ask a couple at the bar to slide over and open up a space. There's room here for about twenty (there are three small tables), and the tight quarters force a sense of camaraderie: anytime a guest needs to walk toward the back, to the rest room, patrons along the bar cheerfully lean forward to make way.

But it's more than just the lack of space that makes the place feel so intimate--it's the charming clutter of Parisian signs and Polaroids of hip-looking young men and women stuck in the chandelier and in the corners of mirrors hung on the wall; the agreeably dim lighting; and the music playing just a little too loud, as if your bratty teen-age brother had taken control of the family stereo. And of course there is Zucco himself, who might shake his finger chidingly at a late ...