Libertine.(Restaurant review)

"The French, they say, live to eat," Martin Amis writes in "Money," his novel about the excesses of the nineteen-eighties. "The English, on the other hand, eat to die." New York adores the heart-clogging fare of the British pub, and, in the financial district, such stalwarts as Pound & Pence have long served up fish-and-chips and bangers-and-mash amid dartboards, billiard tables, and Boddingtons-fuelled sing-alongs. A few months ago, the celebrity chef Todd English brought to the neighborhood Libertine, an upper-class take on this working-class trademark. Lest the name fail to convey adequate profligacy, English established his restaurant on Gold Street, in a hotel called Gild Hall, and he christened a dining-room nook the C.E.O.'s Table. Out front, guests are greeted by depictions of a griffin, the mythological eagle-lion hybrid charged with guarding Scythia's gold. English (surname aside, he's a Georgia boy) revels in theatrics--a self-professed hair-gel junkie, he once made People's "Fifty Most Beautiful" list--and a few months ago he could be excused for thinking that all this was a marvellous idea. But what happens when there isn't any gold to guard?

Libertine can be a lonely place. The other night, a table of three was the rare bird among a covey of lone diners--reading, texting, staring ...