Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, who paid $2.5 billion for Countrywide Financial Corp. and $29 billion for Merrill Lynch & Co., can now enjoy a $180 Krug champagne-paired tasting menu in the company “cafeteria” at the base of its new $1 billion Manhattan skyscraper.

Or he could save money and order some pastrami in the same joint. My advice: Get the pastrami.

Welcome to Aureole -- not really a mess hall. Charlie Palmer has relocated the fine-dining gem of his restaurant empire from a townhouse on the quiet Upper East Side to a heavily trafficked stretch on the edge of Times Square. That means tourists, Conde Nast editors and bankers who drop in from upstairs.

And since bankers aren’t eating as lavishly as they used to, there’s a new casual component to the restaurant: a bar room up front with pork-belly pastrami sliders. They’re slathered with Russian dressing that cuts through the fatty spiced meat.

I’d recommend these little $15 sandwiches to Lewis, even though a chief executive may prefer to indulge in a square $180 meal every now and then (It’s $115 without wine). But that supper, just like billion-dollar acquisitions, needs to offer value. This one doesn’t.

It’s a parallel tasting menu. Fish eggs are prepared two ways: Sun trout roe, atop a bland mound of crab, explodes into a briny bliss; the second dish, American caviar, nearly disappears amid a horseradish creme fraiche sauce.

Culinary Redundancy

Flatfish comes two ways too: Dover sole is speckled with brilliant hints of slightly sweet, slightly musty champagne grapes; Atlantic gray sole is fried to a flavorless crisp, Gorton’s fish-stick style.

Course three is red meat, yet again, two ways: A slice of duck breast and a slice of underseared dry-aged strip steak. You eat the duck first, which is a mistake, since your beef is now cold. You’re still hungry after the minuscule portions. So you fill up on course four: cheesecake two ways, one with ricotta, the other with blue cheese. No wonder America keeps getting fatter.

Chef Christopher Lee, who led Midtown’s Gilt to two- Michelin stars, is to blame for this expensive experiment; Adam Tihany, the designer, is to blame for the interiors. The low dining-room ceiling does little to remind you you’re in Manhattan’s second-tallest building.

Cacophony

Tables are cramped -- the rear ends of waiters can hover dangerously close to your face. Raucous businessmen can raise the sound to unbearable levels. Refuse to sit at a table near the bar room: A lack of doors separating the spaces results in cacophony.

The fare is billed as progressive American. Here’s what that means: Christopher Lee takes excellent ingredients and manipulates the flavor out of them.

Take the diver scallops, on the three-course, $84 prix- fixe. The bivalves are typically seared on the outside and left rare inside. But Lee sees a need to deconstruct where no one else does. His textureless scallop is topped with a crunchy disk, with overseared foie gras thrown on top to make things fancy. A good scallop is complex. Lee’s is complicated.

Remoulade, tasty on its own, is disassembled into sour little purees of shallots, cornichons and lemon. Don’t let the misplaced molecular gastronomy touch your soft-shell crab. Lee also takes mirin, a Japanese cooking wine, and whips it into foam that mimics the taste of shaving cream.

Haute Office Fare

Like Nissin’s “Cup Noodles’’? Lee goes through all the effort to recreate the signature mushy pasta and thin broth of the $1 office snack. Cost: $25 for the pork-belly noodle bowl at lunch. The $19 bar burger is a mix of expertly aged beef overwhelmed by a ramp dressing; the sweet sauce is a ringer for the “special sauce” at McDonald’s.

The food’s not all bad. Short ribs inject a welcome hint of beefiness into a sweet carrot soup. Tuna Wellington is a clever, hearty interplay of soft dough and softer, rare fish. And perhaps a man like Lewis can afford a bad meal or two to find the winning dishes here. But the rest of us cannot.

Rating: *

The Bloomberg Questions

Cost? Prix-fixe at $84, $115. A la carte at bar room.

Sound level? Unusually loud for fine dining.

Date place? No. It says you’re trying too hard.

Inside tip? Eat at the bar; skip the stuffy dining room.

Special feature? Excellent value $65 wine pairing.

Private room? Yes.

Will I be back? For the pastrami sliders and wine.

Aureole is at 135 West 42nd St. in the Bank of America Tower. Information: +1-212-319-1660; http://www.charliepalmer.com

What the Stars Mean:

****         Incomparable food, service, ambience.
***          First-class of its kind.
**           Good, reliable.
*            Fair.
No stars     Poor.

(Ryan Sutton writes about New York City restaurants for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ryan Sutton in New York at rsutton1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 30, 2009 00:01 EDT