Daily News from New York, New York • 232

"60 DAILY NEWS Friday, May 25, 1990 3 A AV DT E'C A mixed Broadway Grill at Times Square's Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza laced with olive oil. Roast chicken also with mashed pota toes, is topped with onion slices cooked in balsamic vinegar plus grilled zue- chmi, eggplant and leeks: ing strategy would be to fill in the far end and middle of the room first Then, by the time the tables near the kitchen need to be filled, the people seated in the rest of the room will be generating enough human noise to make the kitchen noise less obtrusive. Just an idea. In any case, to enjoy this place and it is meant to be useful to New Yorkers for before or after the theater, and as a At last look, oyster and clams on the half shell were $1.25 apiece, the green salad $4.50, and the soup of the day $3.50. (I haven't tried any.) My favorite appetizer, however, is a piece or two (or three) from one of the wonderful plate-sized pizzas.

The standard tomato, mozzarella and basil is the least of them and, at $8.75, the lowest priced. The rest are and include one topped with Three lightly glazed, grilled pork chops ($15) are succulent and tender despite their thinness. A "T1 OUNCE LIZARD fl returned the other eve to good-sized slab of grilled I the noble Cabana Carioca, salmon, $15.50 with a i.7nT7il his No. 1 rave restaurant Swiss roesti-style potato anyplace (123 W. 45th St) and discovered that since the last time he was there the bar has added a pancake, was cooked right on the mark, unless you like your salmon on the rare side.

Calves' liver avail few more house-special Brazilian able my first visit but not cocktails to the list alongside the festive, industrial-strength caipirinhas. So he ordered the whole gang and checked 'em out for you one by one. You'll It looks like your worst Imagining of a Holiday Inn remember that Lounge Lizard has the second is cut thick, cooked pink and comes with mashed potatoes. And one night's burger special though cooked more well than the medium-well requested, came on a deliciously substantial bun. All the potatoes the mashed, the fries, the already told you about caipirinhas, which are made out of limes and the sensationally lethal sugar-cane derivative known as cachaca.

There may be better caipirinhas around than Cabana Cari oca's, but Lounge By ARTHUR SCHWARTZ Daily Newt Restaurant Cm OF YOU KNEW DAVID (as in Cookies), like the New York food world knows David, the last place you'd expect to find him is in a Holiday Inn. And, as some of his old detractors gleefully predicted, his month-old restaurant, the Broadway Grill in Broadway's latest monster hotel, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, isn't working at least not yet A lot of David's food is very good, but the place itself is absolutely terrible a real deterrent to enjoying the food. The salad-pizza-pasta-grilled entree-banana split menu is right in character for the man who made millions in chocolate chunk cookies. It's also a logical evolution from Chez Louis, David's upscale East Side restaurant specializing in large servings of gar-licked and herbed meats, poultry and potatoes. But the Broadway Grill looks like well, it looks like your worst imagining of a Holiday Inn institutionally cold, oversized and quite ugly despite blond wood paneling, handsome two-toned wood-topped tables and comfortable, attractively upholstered chairs, nn WORSE YET, Yll 7 against the far wall from the restaurant's second-floor lobby entrance "Just an escalator away from Broadway," as David's wife, Susan, who manages the place, likes to say is a vast open kitchen.

Besides giving the room the pall of a college cafeteria, the kitchen also makes it Lizard doesn't know where. As for roesti come as a la the new guys, all also made with cachaca: The limao is exactly like a caipirinha except it doesn't have fresh limes in it and Walter the Bartender says he doesn't know why anybody wouldn't just drink a lunch place if you work in one of the growing number of Times Square-area office buildings it's best to concentrate on your table's conversation and what's on your plate. Among the appetizers, there's a refreshing vinaigrette-dressed salad of chopped tomato, cucumber and sweet peppers ($4) and a marvelous plate of cold grilled vegetables ($5.50, also available as an entree for Asparagus come napped in a wonderful sesame sauce ($4.75 for a half dozen), but one night the asparagus were almost raw; another night they were cooked just enough. Fried calamari over a spicy, green chili sauce ($6 as an appetizer, $12 as an entree) have also been variable: one night tender; one night not Incidentally, the prices from one visit to the next changed, too. On my second visit, a few items went up 50 cents, $1, even $3, and the rib-eye steak was hiked to $23.50 from a less intimidating $18.

lots of caramelized onions dotted with small black olives, one with a less generous amount of diced wild mushrooms, one with grilled eggplant and zucchini, one with diced clams and one with duck conflt Two of the three entree pastas are cooked and served in parchment, a method that allows the kitchen to re-prepare the spaghetti and still serve it at the right consistency. However, the seafood version I tried ($14.50) was unremarkable; perhaps the tomato, black olives and herb package ($12.50) is more my speed. For me, the best entrees come from the grill. That 16-ounce rib-eye steak, smartly served with its fabulously fatty deckle still attached, is as good as any great steakhouse's beef and comes with a mountain of crisp match-stick fries. Butterflied "lemon-grilled poussin" a small chicken $16, is juicy and crisp-skinned (though I didnt taste any lemon) and comes with great mashed potatoes caipirinha instead and he's right The coconut.

Lounge Lizard feels, is perhaps a bit on the cloying side, as coconut-liqueur thingies go. Also there is some kind of passion -fruit job whose name Lounge Lizard forgets but which has a profoundly sweet-chemical taste instantly identified by Lounge Lizard's companion Miss carte side dishes, too, $3.50 or $4, and they are all so good you may want to order extras. Sweet teeth should stick to the three-scoop Haagen-Dazs banana splits or the fluffy, though merely okay, mousse marred by intrusive bits of dark chocolate. The tarts that dominate the dessert list (all $4.50 at the moment) are in need of as much help as the off-putting dining room. The wine list has more bottles than I've seen in ages, and the $12 to $19 possibilities are re-, markable for the money.

BROADWAY GRILL: 2d-floor lobby, Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Broadway at 48th (212) 315-6161. Open 7 days noon-3 p.m., 5-midnight Res. accepted. Major credit. Elevator access for handicapped.

Blushes VaVoom as Tropical Fruit Lifesaver. And finally there is the caju. Lounge Lizard hardly knows what to say about the caju. Walter the Bartender was visibly alarmed that Lounge Lizard wanted one and tried to argue him out of it. Walter the Bartender kept insisting that everybody hates cajus and even in Brazil nobody will touch the things except extremely primitive and obscure tribes of clifT dwellers that live deep in the interior.

At this point, and Lounge Lizard swears this is a true story, a couple of guys in By Rich del Rosso very noisy. As a background to dinner, you get the whoosh of dishwashing water, the clank of pots, the sizzle of a deep-fat frier, the rattle of silver and the crash and clatter of plates being cleaned and stacked. One night I was there, beads and headdresses down at the end of the bar started shouting at Walter the Bartender and gesticulating wildly and assuring Lounge Lizard that cajus are delicious and are moreover extremely healthful. "Good for heart!" they beamed, thumping themselves vigorously on the chest So Lounge Lizard and Blushes had a couple snorts, as meanwhile Walter the Bartender blanched and covered his face and turned awav and ornsspH himself the room was also treated to eye-burning volumes of smoke from the open grills. After all these years in business, you'd think the Holiday Inn and, um.

Well. Cashew-derived people (or David) would have figured out how to ventilate a kitchen. Another stupidity I have trouble understanding is the way the room is being seated. Both times I've been to the Broadway Grill, my parties have been given tables right next to the stuff, it says on the bottle, but Lounge Lizard has to say caju doesn't taste like anything he has ever tasted anywhere on this entire Earth, and he figures that for a mere $3.25 you midnight patrolpersons probably want to check it out at least once. Good for heart, what the hell.

Lounge Lizard personally likes to take care of i body, you know? Lounge Lizard's body is a temple. open kitchen, even though the rest of the room was practically empty. May I suggest that a better seat ttTC.JL'. I-Vl-l-' 'Turkey Dressing.