Newsday from New York, New York • 233

Vi I lk- mWMWttWM -V It IE A A TT By Molly ONeill watchers and the dedicated drones of Manhattans trend-mill who pack the place are all cast in hepatitis hue. They cant hear each other. They shiver. They ask for their furs. It is cold.

And lots of the food should be framed, not eaten. Tempura Sashimi, for instance, a rice roll studded with fresh tuna, deep fried and then sliced on a champagne sauce makes a pretty picture. Kit the play of textures and flavors doesnt work. Showered with shredded daikon and fanned with thick crepes, crisp duck is a compelling composition. But it has no taste.

Some of the cooking transcends all thefuss-fuss inherent in the East-meets-West mode. Squid, for i diesting: AT A GLANCE: Disco-size, pop Asian feederie. Lunch Monday through Friday noon to 2:30 p.m.; dinner seven days 5:45 to 11:45 p.m. Dinner with wine, tax and tip $65; all major credit cards. Reservations essential; jacket and tie recommended.

MENU: French nouvelle with Oriental accents. Kitchen makes mass-feed shortcuts and is inconsistent Best dishes; Ca-lamari salad; brown rice; Shanghai lobster; lamb with lade sauce; grilled squab on crispy noodles. WINE USTi Pricey array of well-known French, American and Australian labels, few of which flatter the fere. Best matches: 85 Herrenweg Trukheim Gewurztra-miner, '85 Les Charmes Chas-sagne Morrtrachet, 83 Clos des Myglands Mercurey, 85 Eyrie Pinot Noir, CHINA GRILL IS So Very So Vi Very Loud. So Very Design Now.

It is a du-chi Euro-Asian cafe, carved into the chilly west end of the CBS Black Rock building; a sprawling au-courant cavern. Very large. Framed by glass and black granite, the three stories of enclosed midtown atmosphere are softened hy ITFO-sim, floating Untarno, lightened by 175 black-and-gold rattan cafe chairs; they are a-glitter with cameos by Diane Keaton and Beverly SHls, Malnomhe Fnifcga and Christopher Phimmwr-Still, the music bounces like beams from a spe-hinkers lantern off the China Grills oxidized copper-look walls, off its burnished gold architectural fixtures and around the stainless steel display kitchen in the middle of the restaurant. Very loud. On the pickled-wood floor, in a band that trails from one platformad dining space to the other, entries from Marco Polos journal are lettered.

He was the original west-meets-east guy," explained Keqji, China Grill manager and himself one of the original name-brand maitre ds. Before opening in Manhattan, Keqji made Santa Monicas Chinois cm Main chic-er than Now, backed by real estate developer, Jeffrey Chodorow, Keqji is trying to work the same magic in midtown. And he is trying to do it with the East-meets-West theme. It is, he explained, unique and enduring and now. The Marco Polo legend that is lettered on the floor also runs in lines of type on the artsy, plastic menus.

'One ivory-toned chopstick is stamped China; its mate is stamped Grill. The restaurants coat of arms is stitched on the heart side of the waiters white jackets, glazed on the restaurants white plates. Very designed. Very mud a package. And, as the new tax laws instance, is marvelous in a lime and miso Lamb salad is a peppery marvel.

Simple entrees like the grilled chicken with toasted garlic, the roasted veal chop with Japanese mushrooms and the peppered sirloin with greens are safest. The lobster with ginger, curry and flash-fried spinach is wonderful. So is the grilled lamb with a tangy green sauce, and the squab with shitake plum sauce. But the sizzling whole fish is diy, the dude-fried rice is greasy. The red and black fish is bullied by red onion butter sauce.

The honey-glazed duck is dry and cloying. The scallops with red pepper and ginger coulia are tough, in their acrid sauce. like the two dining rooms, the food is so Very Designed. But it is So Very Beside the point. China Grill is a runway built for playing prosperous.

Newly prosperous. Nervously prosperous. Right now, its tough to get a table. China Grill-as-poushed-arena is So Very Now that it doesnt matter that China Grill-as-dining-spot is Very So-So. in and the trembling Dow Jones send shivers through the expense account trade, China Grill is Very Now.

It is a $3 milium restaurant-by-perspective, a polished package. It is the convergence of rock and roll and real estate. Very now. But not very good. For one thing; the place has nothing to do with people.

Under China Grills lights, the network' and the in-from-Paramus-set, the star Cafe-Goers Rock Over Drinks and Din Nevada? Vtavl noreaeu New Yorks Hard Rock Cafe: ffo drugs or nuciaar weapons allowed. romper room and retail store. Souvenirs, sold by day at the separate shop next door, were being bought at the coat-check cubby. Near (hot at) the bar, a sedate cou-) from Cherry Hill, stood Btiff- as their sons, one subteen and one older, gaped. It was my idea to come here the woman said, her voice trailing off in as they were hastily shepherded to their seating.

At one table, a cake ablaze with candles was served to a 10-year-old birthday boy, his parents and five of his buddies, most of whom had their fingers stuck in their ears. Five times in the space of two hours, amiable applause broke out as a voice boomed over the music, OKAY, HARD ROCKERS, WE HAVE A VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAY HERE, lets hear it for Andrea or Neil or whomever. Why is the cafe so popular, a tall, slim, female-executive type was asked. Its cool, she summed up. At another table, two yuppie couples from Connecticut had finirfmd feeding their broods two fives, two fours and two twos, one of whom had fallen asleep across his mommys lap.

Had they been there before? She nodded. Whenever were in New York with the kids. Then, anticipating the strangers question: Why do we come here? Because its the only place where they can scream and holler and throw things on the floor and nobody pays any attention. And the beat goes on. in By Bernadette Wheeler THE BEAT goes on.

The thumping success of the iU, Hcurd Rock Cafes shows no sign of letup as the cloning continues, at home and abroad, of the 16-year-old original in London. Washington, D.C. (in 1988) and then Boston, are targeted for openings of the so-far phenomenally successful, something for everyone cafes whose signature T-shirts, jackets, watches and other souvenirs are status symbols far teen and sub-teen sets across the country. -The two cafes in the works, plus those in New York, Dallas, London, Stockholm, Tokyo and Reyjavik, are controlled by Isaac Tigrett, a transplanted Tennessean who recently went public with his company. Five, others, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, are owned by Tigretts former partner, Peter Morton, a co-founder of the London eatery.

When they split in 1985, they also carved up rights in United States (and other parts of the world) to operate Hard Rock Cafes and to cash in on the trademarks All apparently follow the same basic formula, typified by the Manhattan outpost at 221 W. 57th St, where 1960 Cadillac fins protrude from the facade decked with British and American flags and a neon sign (also in print onjohn No mugs or nuclear weapons allowed. After three years, why do people still stand outside on lines that some I CD 3T CD 3 Q. There is the funhouse museum atmosphere, created by the incredible collection of memorabilia, mostly from the rock-music world. Virtually every inch of the two-level space is decorated with such things as Elvis Presleys velvet suit, more than 200 gold albums awarded to the Beatles, the Beach Boys and others, and dozens of guitars donated by rock stars.

If you cant ID an item, youll be handed a guide to the hall of fame. And there is the incessant beat of the music, played at a near-deafening dedble level from tapes made in Dallas for all the cafes. On a recent night the packed -house looked like a good-natured package of equal parts singles scene, rock concert, tourist attraction. times stretch down the bkxk or pack the huge, guitar-shaped bar waiting for tables in a place with a no-reserva-tions policy (except forVIPs and 11:30 a.m. birthday parties)? Why do tables in the 240-eeat restaurant turn over an average of seven times a night? Probably because its true, as a spokeswoman said, that There is something for everyone, six to Bixty.

There is the moderately priced, decent food basic Americana, with empbawa on the southern mode of barbecued ribs and pig sandwiches, plus burgers, French fries and all overflowing the plates and snappfly served by determinedly cheerful staffers. (In Dallas, fejitas are on the menu, and Stockholm has Swedish specialties.).