Gilt by Association

Turn-of-the-century splendor at Café Carmellini

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

CAFÉ? IF YOU SAY SO. Andrew Carmellini's latest-his first restaurant to open, his people say with terrific gravitas, under his own name-is to the usual café as caviar is to chicken eggs. It's housed in the new five-star Fifth Avenue Hotel, a McKim, Mead & White mansion originally erected as a Gilded Age bank. I have never seen a maître d' so eagerly leap to hold back a tablecloth lest a scrap of cotton worry my delicate legs. Show up five minutes early to your reservation and you can watch staffers with wireless irons attack every wayward wrinkle.

The room is decorated in high-gilt style: The banquettes are blue velvet, and two Art Nouveau peacocks etched in glass preside over the bar. Tables can be booked on the wraparound mezzanine for those who require more privacy than the canopy of trees down the center of the dining room can provide.