Adour.(Restaurant review)

There are people, a dwindling lot, who are secure in their mortgages and to whom the spectre of five-dollar-a-gallon gas presents more a challenge than a threat. These people eat at Adour. The restaurant opened in the St. Regis several months ago, and it's as posh and pricey as the eatery of a landmarked hotel necessitates. It also constitutes the away team in a much-hyped rematch: the toughest of restaurant towns versus the Frenchest of chefs, the Michelin-star-studded Alain Ducasse. (An earlier New York venture by Ducasse, who operates twenty-one restaurants, including one in the Eiffel Tower, closed in 2006; of that spot, with its handbag perches and splatter art, the less said the better.) Ducasse may be the underdog, but those in a sporting mood will judge his new joint by what shows up at the ballpark. Let the game commence.

Adour, as a recent diner put it, "feels like a jewelry box," rectangular and pewter-colored, with floridly etched glass and burgundy banquettes. Waiters stand along the perimeter, as solemn as tennis ball boys, before dashing hither and thither to perform solicitous acts and utter hushed the-pleasure-is-all-mine-sirs and think-nothing-of-it-ma'ams. The food is exquisitely executed French: duck foie-gras terrine, striped bass in sauce vin jaune, chicken ...