I Sodi.(Restaurant review)

September brings Fashion Week, in which a large white tent swallows Bryant Park, recalling the quarantine scene from "E.T.," and Chipotle-munching earthlings are expelled by alien forces from the planet Cipriani. If you could take the appealing things about it--beauty, taste, social energy--and leave behind the annoying ones--long waits, stupid prices, jerks--you might come up with something like I Sodi, the West Village restaurant run by Rita Sodi, who moved to New York from Florence last year, after decades working for Calvin Klein Jeans. Christopher Street is a "directional" choice, to use the industry euphemism, but the S. & M. sidewalk scene only makes the place, once you're inside, feel like more of a haven. Sodi, the platinum-spike-haired proprietress, is often at the bar, treating it like her kitchen table, and her casual air--one night, she and some friends were hacking away at a watermelon--is contagious. The young sommelier, Hakan Westergren, and Mark Dorsey, his wised-up sidekick, are smart, funny, and generous with the post-meal grappa. They're also generous with those who have partaken too much of their generosity. One night, Dorsey offered a home remedy for hiccups: a lemon dunked in bitters, ...