Bobo.(Restaurant review)

This is a tale of two restaurants. Bobo on a Tuesday: chic and laid-back, Harvey Weinstein holding court in one corner, Adrien Brody canoodling with a young woman in another, a nice bottle of Tempranillo. Bobo on a Thursday: crowded and noisy, girls with dangerously revealing decolletage and glittery green eyeshadow debating weight-loss methods, men in tight T-shirts hitting on the girls, rum-and-Diet Coke. On a Tuesday, the town-house setting, chockablock with old books and knickknacks, silver-framed family photographs, red drapes, and cascading crystal chandeliers, seems wonderfully intimate; on a Thursday, a diner took in the room and said sadly, "It's so cheeseball."

Perhaps this split personality has its origins in the restaurant's name: "bobo," an abbreviated portmanteau of "bourgeois" and "bohemian," is one of those terms which are used more often as denigration than as compliment. (It's kind of like calling the place Yuppie.) Bobo's menu proclaims its desire to become "a clubhouse for those with a modern perspective on old-fashioned fun." At its best, the place captures that feeling of warmth and ease, but at its worst it feels labored and cynical. (Not the staff, ...