We could make a dinner of small plates, starting with this marvelous farro salad.

          You feel the tingle as you stumble in to Charlie Bird, thrilled to have found it after all.  (It’s not where it’s supposed to be, for goodness sake, not at 5 King Street as advertised. That’s a brownstone. It’s around the corner on Sixth Avenue.)  And it’s not just the noisy prattle of the youngish crowd or the strains of insistent hip hop. Co-owner Robert Bohr is a hip hop fan, as well as a cardinal in wino circles. After stints in Aspen, California and Martha’s Vineyard, chef-owner Ryan Hardy cooked privately for Beyonce and Jay Z. 

A scattering of grownups invades the hot young scene at booked up Charlie Bird.

          That electric charge is about somehow landing where it’s really happening. Feel the heat of belonging in this narrow joint on the edge of Soho, with prints of boom boxes on one wall and half a dozen microphones as décor, already booked tight, weeks ahead. Not that I would be here if I hadn’t found someone who knew someone who scored a table before 10 pm. Now I’ve landed with two friends at this tight little three-top on the mezzanine, fenced in by a perforated steel stairway that vibrates when servers leap up and down.

Hip hop sound carries onto Sixth Avenue while weather still permits doors thrown wide.

          The small menu is bold in color, with “Vegetables” in the same size type as “Large Plates.” It is deliberately unassuming (if you remove the rubber band and unfold it there are hidden photographs of hip hop icons). That makes the wine list even more stunning.

We sip a Drouhin beaune from $60 glasses and taste the chicken liver mousse whipped with mascarpone .

          We could be sipping a $230 Pichon Lalande from these $60 Zalto wine goblets. (Wine connoisseur Bohr insisted.) Actually, we’re drinking a $45 Burgundy I love from that astonishing list: Drouhin’s 2011 Chorey-Les-Beaune. “All wines are available as a half bottle,” even more staggering.

Contender for best chicken in town – served with chick liver mousse and crispy bits.

          Bohr and Hardy have suggested the food is Italian, American, New York. Let’s just say it’s vaguely familiar, but original and mostly delicious. The Tuscan chicken liver is no more Tuscan than I am. It’s whipped with mascarpone and stunningly rich, salted with capers, served hanging on the side of a bowl, with thick slices of warmed bread that would be better grilled. It returns later under remarkable roasted chicken, its skin wondrously crusty, served with favas and chunks of bread sautéed in chicken fat.

I like that the kitchen divides uni duck egg pasta into three portions for us to share.

          I’ll be back for that chicken and for another round of  lemony duck egg spaghetti with a plump sea urchin perched on top. It comes to our table already divided for sharing onto three plates by the kitchen. This is uptown upscale service on a raffish corner of Soho.

Manni olive oil coats raw fluke with tomatoes and almonds, both slivered and pickled.

          Almond slivers and pickled almonds add crunch to Long Island fluke glittering with prestigious Manni olive oil.  You could easily, contentedly, make a dinner sharing small plates – again, familiar but better.  Pistachio, mint and intense little tomatoes are tossed with farro in a luscious salad. 

          Grilled peach and charred onions join walnut crema, basil and prosciutto on a plate that says summer. Speckled beans and green garlic add texture to caramelized octopus.  Escarole stands in for romaine on a Caesar-like salad, salty from anchovy. Marrow with anchovy and lemon doesn’t need a last minute dusting of salt.

          Even leaning in at our tiny table, we shouted to be heard over hip hop and others shouting to be heard across the room. I wondered what the noise had been like before Bohr closed over the Labor Day weekend to install sound-proofing. Still, we marveled over the hot, buttered corn with firm chunks of chanterelles and exquisitely fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and anchovy.

          We left most of the Italian “kimchi” style escarole, not because of the Calabrian chile scorch – I loved that – but rather, the salty overkill, anchovy again. Though we’d eaten too much to try an entrée, we revived for pistachio lemon cake with stracciatella ice cream, a brilliant finale. It disappeared.

          My friend of a friend called in a favor to reserve another table for me. I returned last Friday with friends who’d gamely suffered too many indifferent reviewing dinners with me.  We agreed the glistening focaccia was unusually good, “like a cheese Danish.”

          Again, we shared almost all the small plates. Again, I couldn’t get anyone to go for the tripe. We savored the grilled peaches knowing they would soon be gone from the market. We each had a razor clam shell filled with chopped clam, fennel and pickled chiles.

          The night’s pasta special – spaghetti, remarkably al dente, with fresh porcini – both cooked and slivered raw -- was more lush than it might have been in Tuscany. That is not a complaint. But it was not pre-divided in the kitchen. I guess I am already spoiled. The suckling piglet was the only disappointment: its fiery escarole kimchi not enough to make up for stringy, dry meat and soggy skin. (I can still taste the miraculous pig face at Khe-Yo.)

          Plums -- both roasted and fresh, purple and green -- with a scoop of stracciatella gelato, pleased all of us. It evoked the fleeting season, the market, the sensitive chef in a kitchen without a pastry cook.  My friends asked to meet the manager and took her card, hoping  she would recall them when they phoned. “I’ll remember you as the young man in the back of the room,” she replied to my 60ish pal.

          There are only 63 seats, but supposedly the bar is kept for walk-ins. The electricity of Manhattan heat can cool quickly when the nocturnal nomads lem off to the next new sensation. Of course, some restaurants’ heat never cools. Bohr and Hardy are planning for next spring. They hope to have a sidewalk café by the time it turns balmy again.

Photographs may not be used without permission from Gael Greene. Copyright 2013. All right reserved.

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