Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- No fortune cookies follow meals at Wakiya, the ambitious but perplexing Chinese restaurant in Manhattan's Gramercy Park Hotel.

If I'd received one, I know what it would have said: ``If you wish to accumulate great riches, stop spending $500 on Chinese food.''

The high concept here is that nobody cooks Chinese as well as Yuji Wakiya, who has three restaurants in Tokyo and is extravagantly endorsed by Nobu Matsuhisa, the unconditional master of Japanese-American fusion cuisine. ``The best Chinese food anywhere,'' he states in a press release.

Management is by Team Nobu, explicitly including Robert De Niro. (If he's the guy in charge of chilling the white wine, he's doing a lousy job.)

The narrow, shotgun-style room looks and feels more like a lounge than a restaurant. The decor is Chinatown Gothic -- Victorian sconces, red string curtains, red carpet, black chopsticks, black tables and waiters dressed in black. The music is loud and discordant -- friends took turns describing it as ``massage parlor,'' ``Asian porno shop'' or -- most frightening to me -- ``London bar scene.''

The cuisine is meant to be multiregional, with interpretations of traditional dishes from the cities of Shanghai, Canton and Beijing, and from Sichuan Province. But there's more: French (a fabulous fried-rice omelet) and Japanese (a decent green salad with sesame dressing).

There's even a holistic section of the menu devoted to foods steamed in oolong tea. Healthy, it may be. Tasty, it is not.

Incomprehensible Menu

The menu, which explains little, will drive you nuts. I asked one of my guests which items were clear to him, and he replied, shakily, ``The vegetable fried rice.'' It's a list of names, few of them comprehensible.

Almost every dish must be explained, which seems to be driving the pleasant, hard-working waiters to despair. One looked at the four of us puzzling over menus and begged, ``We ask one person to take charge. People have trouble making a decision.''

Quite a few items are worth the trouble required to determine what they might be. These include Tung Po braised pork (spectacularly rich, moaningly satisfying, soy-soaked pork belly), Ma Po Tofu (extraordinarily silken bean curd with diced pork) and Pan Seared Sea Bass with Golden Sand (crispy-skinned, moist filet topped with heaps of ocher-colored, deep-fried panko). The shrimp dumplings and the crab soup dumplings are explicable and excellent.

Preening

The restaurant has been extensively promoted, and it suffers from excessive preening. From the press release, we learn that Wakiya's food is ``so beautifully presented it's as if it were painted on the plate!''

In fact, the presentations are simplistic, even naive. Chefs often demonstrate their artistry with cold dishes, but nothing here dazzles. I encountered quite a few pinwheels, the food fanned out. One friend said of them, ``Reminds me of Rachael Ray saying, `You can turn yesterday's leftovers into a delightful, attractive, cold meal.'''

Yet almost all the cold dishes are tasty, particularly those with tofu. Layered Spicy Soy Pidan Tofu (pidan refers to preserved eggs) is complex and crunchy from dried shrimp and pickled vegetables. Tofu Pasta Salad is an Atkins-friendly version of Manhattan's ubiquitous cold pasta with sesame sauce, a dish that mysteriously arrives free in Manhattan with Chinese takeout. Here it's $9, still a bargain.

Small Portions

If you skip lobster, scallop and the domestic, kobe-like, ``washu'' beef, and you can do so without missing much, you won't pay more than $25 per plate. That sounds fine, but portions are small and you might find yourself ordering endlessly and spending wildly. Cocktails are small, tasty and cost $14. The least expensive wine is $50.

There's plenty to avoid: The Peking Duck includes too- intense hoisin, too-bland scallions and too-dry julienned meat. The Fiery Pepper Hunt Chicken is remarkably bad -- it's hard to believe a Japanese chef can prepare fried chicken this soggy. The Sea Bass in Hot Chouten Olive Oil -- the first time I've encountered olive oil in Chinese cuisine -- is essentially oil- slick fish filets. (You'll remember the Exxon Valdez.) Don't even consider the Sauteed Broccoli With Chinese Bacon. I don't want to know what's in that sauce.

Pastry chef Gabriele Riva's desserts live up to Wakiya's hype. They're original, delightful and almost entirely successful -- my one quibble is the stringy mango in Wakiya's Signature Mango Pudding. Particularly satisfying was black sesame ice cream with strawberries and white-chocolate granite, a sundae-lover's dream.

Wakiya suffers from an absence of delights. Yes, the mango pudding comes atop a tea pot spouting carbon dioxide fumes from melting dry ice. And when the oolong tea is poured over hot rocks, shaking and rumbling and steam ensue. It's all entertaining, but fun-filled vapor does not a culinary triumph make.

The Bloomberg Questions

Cost? Prices range from $7 for several dim sum dumpling dishes to $36 for Grilled Washu Steak.

Sound level? The affluent guests are quiet; the invasive music isn't.

Date place? No. You'll look ignorant asking the waiter to explain every dish.

Inside Tip? On the other hand, if you're seeing a tofu- lover, the most difficult kind of eater to impress, I can't think of a better destination.

Private Room? Yes.

Lunch? No.

Will I be back? Sorry, but Wakiya makes you remember how cheap it is to eat in Chinatown.

Wakiya Gramercy Park Hotel is at 2 Lexington Ave., at 21st Street, Manhattan. Information: +1-212-995-1330; http://www.gramercyparkhotel.com.

(Alan Richman is a restaurant critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Alan Richman in New York at thecritic@optonline.net.

Last Updated: October 3, 2007 00:03 EDT