New Eateries

TWO PROMISING NEW EATERIES JOIN CREEPY (??!!) DISTRICT'S REVIVAL
By STEVE CUOZZO



April 12, 2006 -- TWO more throbbingly good new restaurants just sprouted in the culinarily deprived Creepy Hotel District north of Madison Square Park. In an age when gonzo design rules, Urena and A Voce embrace the far-out notion that people dine out to enjoy food, not to drool over an overpaid architect's ego trip.

Not long ago, the area was as dead after dark as Wall Street. Then the gloomy old Carlton was restored, yuppified, and sexily illuminated after dark. Let there be more light and more raw tuna.

The Carlton kick-started the culinary upheaval with Country, Geoffrey Zakarian's modern-American, bi-level knockout that was an instant winter hit. Now come modern-Spanish Urena (37 E. 28th St.; [212] 213-2328) and seasonal-Italian A Voce (41 Madison Ave., at 26th Street; [212] 545-8555). Who ever expected $55 bistecca in the land of the $50 room?

It's still easy to go astray on these blocks - last Saturday, at Madison and 27th, a tottering streetwalker seemed out of the pre-Rudy era. But more wholesome sensuous thrills are in the new dining rooms, which show off diametrically opposed schools of restaurant launching.

Their chefs previously worked under two of the greatest - A Voce's Andrew Carmellini for Daniel Boulud and Urena's Alex Urena for David Bouley - but the parallel ends there.

A Voce, backed by a British outfit that also owns Gaia in Greenwich, Conn., and restaurants in London, has an army on the floor; Urena has a mom 'n' pop feel, with the same tiny crew working lunch and dinner. "We're still getting organized," a cheerful waitress told me.

A Voce spent a bundle on its looks - one of those cheery, open, walnut-floor-and-leather-top-table numbers that enchants younger diners allergic to formality. Urena's drab, yellow and brown dining room, with lighting too bright for zit-conscious scenesters, looks put together with Krazy Glue; it's drawn a collective "yecch."

But chef Urena's style should ring bells with anyone who's been to northern Spain in the last 10 years. He recently toiled at Suba on Ludlow Street, a ridiculous restaurant best known for a gurgling subterranean moat, and he's in bust-out form after a year underground.

Urena's style has zip in common with the old-school formula of Mesa de Espana a few doors away. It seems inspired instead by modern Basque cookery, which knows how to cook seafood without depleting its natural juices, and ravishes it in inventively layered and textured sauces. Urena is cranking out a torrent of verdant dishes redolent of spring, like a pretty composition of delicately poached tilapia topped by yellow saffron-mussel foam and anchored in vivid green English pea puree.

Urena is still a work in progress; they've finally blocked the uninspiring view through the kitchen door with screens. It's another story at A Voce, where Carmellini opened up at full throttle after 10 storied years as chef at plush Caf‚ Boulud.

After years of cooking French, Ohio-born Carmellini is embracing his Italian heritage with a vengeance. But it's Italian with a twist. Where Urena tames an exotic foreign cuisine by melding it with American ingredients and techniques, A Voce makes a familiar style seem exotic.

Conventional sounding favorites like chicken cacciatora taste new in the hands of a chef unwilling to compromise on technique or raw materials but unafraid to please a crowd. This is herbally assertive, full-fat fare reminiscent of Mario Batali and Tom Valenti.

A Voce and Urena are a happy shock in this silly season of musical-chair chefs and goofy menus. Just watch those sides street when you step out into the night.

steve.cuozzo@nypost.com

( Listen it's the Post what do you want? )