New Nolita Italian spot Civetta makes disappointing debut

• Cuisine: Italian-centric Mediterranean
• Vibe: Inviting downtown kitchen
• Occasion: Group dinner; drink date downstairs
• Don't Miss: Rigatoni alla Bolognese, lamb goat cheese polpettine, lamb sausage with drunken raisins
• Price: Appetizers, $13; entrees, $28; desserts, $7
• Reservations: Recommended
• Phone: (212) 966-9440
• Location: 98 Kenmare St. between Mulberry St. and Cleveland Pl.

Sfoglia is an irresistible Italian spot on the upper East Side with wonderful food and tons of charm. Judging from the reservation book, everyone else thinks it’s irresistible, too. Sfoglia is run by Colleen and Ron Suhanosky, a husband-and-wife team who work alongside each other in the kitchen. But maybe they needed a little space, because they have just built a bigger kitchen in a much bigger restaurant way downtown.

The new place, Civetta, on the edge of Nolita, is Sfoglia’s midlife crisis. The restaurant has two personalities and two dramatically different floors. The first floor is an inviting dining room with sunny yellow walls, shelves stocked with copper pots and canned tomatoes, a fireplace and salvaged church pew-banquettes. But head downstairs, and Civetta is a brooding basement lounge with lipstick-red velvet banquettes, stone walls, white marble tables and tall, drippy candles.

They’ve crafted an extensive cocktail selection to attract a young downtown crowd, serving drinks until 2 in the morning every evening. I started downstairs with a Neopolitan Negroni — a good starter cocktail made with Campari, gin and vermouth — then headed upstairs for dinner. The Suhanoskys’ downtown menu features Italian-focused Mediterranean cooking like baccala fritters with pickled red onions, seafood risotto and grilled sirloin alla pizzaiola. You’ll get tons of attention in the dining room, a little too much from servers who tend to hover.

But nobody’s home in the kitchen. Almost everything’s overcooked or over-sauced. I ordered an appetizer of stone fruits with smoked ricotta. It came in a cloying sea of agrodolce (sweet and sour sauce). My gnocchi were lifeless little nubs stuck in a quicksand of pesto, my romaine, crab and peperonata salad mired in a muck of aioli. We had to saw our way through an overcooked pork cutlet, curiously topped with grated carrots, guanciale salad and Vin Santo dressing. The spaghetti with sea urchin sauce was a foul-smelling disaster. I like briny, salty creatures from the sea, but the sea urchin tasted like it had washed ashore days before.

Maybe Ron and Colleen were downstairs drinking a sidecar, pink lady or Notte Civetta, which translates as night owl. There are a few bright spots on the menu, like moist monkfish polpet-tine (little meatballs) seasoned with ricotta, peppers and olives. I also liked the rigatoni alla Bolognese, made with a wonderful mix of ground veal, lamb, pork and chicken livers. The house-made lamb sausage was fiery and flavorful, served alongside caramelized endive and drunken raisins.

There’s a respectable, mostly Italian wine list with a spicy, medium-bodied Le Salare Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2006 and an excellent Abbazia di Nova-cella Gruner Veltliner 2007. I loved the peach layer cake with mascarpone and meringue, but the rest of the desserts were forgettable.

The owners were so successful uptown. Why did they fail downtown? Is it the subway right below, the scale of the room, the overblown menu? The cooking was so thoughtful and the room so intimate at Sfoglia. Civetta, though, bears little resemblance to its uptown sibling.

Except for the bread. It’s the same bread Colleen bakes at Sfoglia, with a salty, crunchy exterior and soft, plush interior. At least one thing arrived intact.

• Cuisine: Mediterranean
• Vibe: Civilized
• Occasion: Intimate date; business dinner; chef's counter.
• Don't Miss: Sea urchin toast; calamari with squid ink and herb purée; escolar; arroz de pato.
• Price: Appetizers, $9; entrées, $23; desserts, $9.
• Reservations: Recommended
• Phone: (212) 675-7223
• Location: 31 W. 17th St., btwn. Fifth & Sixth Aves.

There's not much to look at in Aldea, a restaurant that recently opened in the Flatiron District. There's no artwork on the walls, no flashy furniture, just a scattering of blond wood tables and muted blue banquettes.

It's a long, narrow space with an open kitchen in the back and a staircase leading to the upstairs dining room. The only prominent flourish is a large cluster of acrylic tubes that dangle over a six-seat chef's counter right in front of the kitchen. I highly suggest you sit at the counter or one of the tables in back, so you can watch the chef at play.

Why is Aldea so plain? Maybe George Mendes doesn't want to distract you from his cooking. After all, he waited two years to get this restaurant off the ground. Mendes has worked in a lot of great kitchens with a lot of great chefs and cooked everything from French to Austrian to American. But when you work for chefs like David Bouley or Alain Ducasse, your job is to cook their food in their style. Now, it's Mendes' turn to introduce his own style.

The menu at Aldea is wholly Mediterranean, inspired by the flavors of Portugal, Spain and the sea. There's sea urchin toast with cauliflower cream and sea lettuce, and salty sardines from Portugal seasoned with Madeira raisins and bitter almond milk. There's a wonderful riff on paella made with duck confit, rice, chorizo, black olives and crispy duck cracklin's. Sometimes, Mendes' style is simple. Dry-cured Portuguese or Serrano ham, garlicky, sautéed shrimp alhinho, or razor clams with ginger.

Sometimes, it's sophisticated and complex, like cuttlefish a la plancha with coconut-curry foam, squid ink and herb purée. There's a lot going on in this dish - a lot of textures, seasonings and technique, and a lot could go wrong. Yet, the cuttlefish comes alive in a playground of harmonious flavors - an unctuous squid ink, a fragrant coconut-curry foam and herb purée. I also had an unusually tender hanger steak topped with a sunnyside-up egg and bone marrow marmalade, and sided by a potato-oxtail terrine.

But there are some potholes in this menu. I was eager to try Mendes' house-cured salt-cod - a Portuguese specialty called bacalao - but it was a bland, poached letdown served in a listless smoked-jamon broth. The roasted pork shoulder was tough and poorly paired with littleneck clams and vegetable pickles. And the "jardin" was a yawn of a salad with spring lettuce, figs and a few shavings of cheese. In fact, I think the kitchen forgot to dress it with the port vinaigrette advertised on the menu.

The wine list is unnecessarily confusing. Instead of separating the wines by the glass from the wines by the bottle, Aldea clumps them all together. The result is a roomful of diners using their finger as a highlighter to sort through the selection.

For dessert, take advantage of the house-made sorbets, especially the chamomile and passionfruit. Or just order the chilled rhubarb and strawberry soup, which comes with the passionfruit sorbet and a eucalyptus panna cotta. Here's what I like most about Aldea: It's a formal-looking, but plain restaurant, with informal prices and mostly great food.

• Cuisine: Mediterranean
• Vibe: Subterranean sanctuary.
• Occasion: Romantic date, group dinner, preconcert bites.
• Don't Miss: Roasted poussin, braised lamb shank
• Price: Appetizers, $8; entrees, $16; dessert; $5.
• Reservations: Accepted
• Phone: (718) 599-0069
• Location: 345 Grand St. between Marcy & Havemeyer Aves, Brooklyn.

I'm not big on atmosphere. I'm the type who prefers phenomenal food to phenomenal décor. I'd take a great steak over a great scene any day. But even I was put off by the grungy entryway to Vutera, a restaurant that opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a few months ago.

Open the door, and you're standing in a dark hallway with a whole mess of concert posters taped to the walls. Just ahead, there's another door with two hand-scrawled signs in light boxes hanging over it. The sign with the arrow pointing right reads: "For Drinks or Music." That takes you to Rose Live Music, a bare-bones bar where alternative Brooklyn bands perform most nights. The sign with the arrow pointing left - the one that says, "For Food" - that's the one you want to follow.

Down an uneven flight of stairs and past a bodega-type ATM is Vutera. Wandering into Vutera is like one of those great "Alice in Wonderland" falling- down-the-rabbit-hole moments. Suddenly, you're in this subterranean sanctuary with low-wood beam ceilings, vintage wine crates along one wall, stone along another. Colorful tulips, old-fashioned candlestick holders, granny plates, dish towel napkins and mismatched chairs and silverware at every table.

Really, the only thing Rose Live Music and Vutera have in common is the same entrance and owners. Brother-and-sister team Carlo & Gina Vutera started serving no-frills food in what they used to call the "restaurant downstairs" about a year ago.

Now it's Vutera. They serve striped bass with sauteed mustard greens, pine nuts, and Meyer lemons shipped from the the chef's mother's house in California. Molly Del Monte, the chef, used to work at Little Giant and Savoy, two well-liked restaurants in downtown Manhattan....

At Vutera, she makes Mediterranean cuisine in the basement of a bar, in a kitchen with no gas. Del Monte makes the most of the four electric stoves. I'm not sure how she manages to pull off such a crispy-skinned poussin with cremini mushrooms, and crispy spaetzle squiggles. Or how she can cook the bavette steak to a perfect medium rare - just as I ordered - and still have time to feed the rest of the guests, all on four electric stoves. The table favorite was a tender, red wine-braised lamb shank with baby carrots and polenta.

But twice I tried the parsnip gnocchi, and twice it was a bust. It sounded good - homemade gnocchi with beet green "pesto," shiitake mushrooms and Valdeon blue cheese. No dice. The gnocchi arrived undercooked in a curiously bland "pesto," made from sauteed beet stems, beet greens, pine nuts and caramelized onions. And the Spanish mackerel escabeche was pickled to death by much too much grapefruit, salt, cumin, coriander and pickled onions.

As for dessert, the apple tart was dry and the almond panna cotta sour, but there's a terrific cheese selection. So do what the Italians do and order cheese and wine to finish. I like when a restaurant features wine by the glass, quartino or bottle, and Vutera offers its entire wine list by all three. My favorites: a spunky 2007 Domaine de la Pepiere Muscadet and a 2006 Aldo Marenco Dolcetto.

There's a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of restaurants, but I live in midtown Manhattan and I'll be back to Vutera.