The Smith.(Restaurant review)

The two-way, four-lane, Jane Jacobs-hostile stretch of Third Avenue just below Fourteenth Street is flanked by the likes of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, and seems to be a staging ground for a shock-and-awe campaign against the arteries. Last fall, Glenn Harris and Jeffrey Lefcourt turned a former Pizzeria Uno space into the Smith, and, whether intended or not, embraced the drag's blandness. "What's with the name?" a waitress was asked recently. "Well, the owners were thinking Blacksmith or Ironsmith or even Foodsmith," she offered. "But they didn't want to be too specific." Generality appears to be a Harris/Lefcourt trademark--they named their Greenwich Village spot Jane, as in plain--and the new place is nuance-free, all blacks and whites. (White subway tiles and black-and-white photos of Victorian nudes line the walls.) Smith, the owners seem to be reminding us, is Everyman's surname.

So does Everyman eat here? "Oh, we get all kinds," the waitress replied. "All ages, all ethnicities, all genders." A canvass of the room, though, revealed mainly N.Y.U. kids, and the Smith's atmosphere evokes a fraternity house, with the acoustics of a rush-season kegger. Servers toss around collegiate slang ("Riddle me this, Batman," a diner was asked recently. "Can I take that dead ...