I recall dozens of exuberant Cobb salads over the years at Redeye Grill. I was an addict. I had to have one, never mind whatever else was on offer. The salad was delivered in stripes of ingredients on a platter -- roast chicken, avocado, bacon, blue cheese, tomato, romaine -- tossed tableside. “Shall I make the dressing light?” the waiter would ask, reading my mind. I was so glad he asked, since even when I wasn’t dieting, I was always brooding about calories.

           My guy most of that era usually had the linguine fra diavolo. There were spiffy dudes in straw skimmers tending the shellfish bar. Sometimes there was live music. Not my thing, but not all that annoying. I recalled the fun when our sculptor friend, Ron Mehlman, created the dancing shrimp for his pal Shelly Fireman. Mehlman did fountains and monuments. He’d never done a shrimp before.

           There was a small kitchen fire in April last year. Surveying repair work, Fireman decided the place needed refreshing too. It reopened in July after a year-long rehab. I hadn’t eaten there in a decade. But just after Labor Day, I put together three friends and asked everyone to order something different. No trick at all, since Redeye’s menu has many categories.

           The space looks great, sparkling and celebratory. The new 888 Café & Bar has landed next door to serve all day starting with breakfast. There is even a small menu of Brooklyn Diner dishes available here while that Fireman outlet nearby on West 57th Street gets a facelift.

           Two of us are early so we share the rainbow roll, a layering of hamachi, jumbo lump crab, tuna and salmon sprinkled with tobiko, and the house’s weird-looking, but delicious, sushi burger -- spicy yellow fin tuna with avocado, wakame seaweed salad and watermelon radish, plus a side of pickled ginger.

I expected the chopped salad to be as good as Cafe Fiorello’s, but it wasn’t even close.

           Tonight’s menu still offers soft shell crab even though our server assures me the season is over. I order the chopped salad instead, thinking it will be like Café Fiorello’s excellent rendition. But it’s a bore, mostly soggy lettuce. The duck quesadilla needs its guacamole and sour cream topping because it is otherwise a bit staid too.

           Shall I say the $14 side of brussels sprouts with toasted cashews and Thai peanut sauce is the triumph of the evening?  It’s certainly special, although the jumbo lump crabmeat and shrimp dish is also luscious with a mound of summer corn niblets alongside.

           And I like the lobster mac and cheese. It reminds me of my mom’s crispy macaroni, even though Mom used everyday elbows and the recipe on the box with milk and supermarket American cheese while Redeye tosses aged cheddar and Gruyère with extra curvaceous cavatelli.  My friend Diane disagrees. She thinks it should be creamier, even goopy. Macaroni preferences must be carried on a familial gene.

           “This is the best table in the house,” says the host last week, seating three of us in the far corner closest to the patio and Seventh Avenue. I like facing the room, with the freshly repainted columns and the revised seafood station next to the bar, although, on second look, I would rather not be confronted with the hairy nudity on the column nearest me.  (You may notice I’ve spared you a photo of it.)

           Alton is our waiter, devoted at first. He brings us pretzel rolls and butter without our asking. But eventually he’s off wooing new arrivals. And apparently his assistant doesn’t speak English since Zarela orders another glass of white wine and he neglects to tell Alton. A server passes with chocolate chip cookies warm on a baking sheet and I take one for later.

           I plan to order a burger with bacon or short rib boeuf bourguignon, the “house specialty.” But in the tension of weighing options and demands, I experience a little brain freeze.   

           I specifically recall requesting only two items to be delivered at a time but suddenly a duo of waiters is trying to put everything on the table at once. “Take the focaccia back to the kitchen for fifteen minutes please,” I cry with only a touch of hysteria in my usual Eva Peron manner.

           And just in time, because a busser arrives with the spicy crunchy tuna roll with eel and sesame sauce and another bearing the dancing shrimp skewered into a whole pineapple. Where else would we put it but right where the focaccia had been parked?

           All my years of history here and I believe these are my first dancing shrimp, six for $35. They are huge, stretched out on wooden sticks – best when eaten hot -- with a trio of sauces for dipping or not – pineapple, ponzu and salsa verde.

           We let Alton toss our Cobb salad and serve it to us. The focaccia returns. It’s the same one we sent back half an hour ago  “You can’t bring us a focaccia that’s been sitting half an hour,” my pal protests. “Take it away and bring a new one,” he instructs Alton’s lieutenant. 

           And it’s just as well that message got lost in the press of new diners because the Cobb is super rich and delicious with lobster nubbins and too much avocado for me, very filling. Nobody wants to even try dessert for journalism’s sake or any other pretext. “Shelly’s desserts are always marvelous,” I note. “We usually have the banana cream pie and the carrot cake.”

           Not tonight, it seems. Alton brings chocolate chip cookies. We each take one or two and a bag of leftovers, and surrender the best table in the house.

890 Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th Street. 212 541 9000. Breakfast 7:30 am to 11:30 am at 888 Café & Bar. Lunch Monday to Friday Red Eye Grill 11:30 to 20:30. At 888 Café & Bar 11:30 am to 5 pm. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday 5 pm to 11:30 pm. Sunday and Monday 5 pm to 11 pm. Weekend Brunch Saturday and Sunday 11:30 am to 5 pm.

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