June 26 (Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Chodorow always gives purposeful names to his restaurants. Kobe Club serves Kobe beef. Wild Salmon serves salmon. RumJungle has, well, cage dancers.

Borough Food & Drink, Chodorow's latest, serves global cuisine collected from and inspired by our city's five boroughs.

So expect the chef to serve whatever he wants from wherever he wants. You got a problem with that?

The first thing that hits you is the smell.

That's a compliment. A woodsy fragrance pervades the rectangular space. Observe the wood floors, wood tables, wood walls.

I'm told the materials were reclaimed from underwater piers, ``mushroom-growing'' barns and old factories. Oddly, the result is a fine pine scent. Leather chairs, bookshelves and a pool table complete the Adirondack feel.

Chodorow is using an upstate ambience to bring together the boroughs of New York. The man tapped to represent the city's diverse cuisines is ``contributing chef'' Zak Pelaccio. (He also owns Fatty Crab, the popular Asian-street-fare outpost in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.)

At Borough, Pelaccio gives us a hodgepodge of lowbrow dishes that I like to call International Deli -- except delis don't serve oysters Rockefeller.

Split-pea soup wouldn't be out of place at a corner store. Here, it's deconstructed: A cool pool of pea puree sits next to coriandered bacon.

Borough Nations

Want Mexican? Try shredded pork with a spicy green salsa. Bosnian? Dried beef is cut thin like prosciutto and topped with a chilly bean salad. Jamaican? How about moist jerk chicken with a tamarind scotch-bonnet sauce. Use the fiery liquid with a less cavalier attitude than I did.

Jewish? Go for brisket with mashed potatoes and gravy. Or is it Southern? That brisket's smoked.

Many of the cocktails -- employing silly ingredients like butterscotch schnapps, X-Rated Fusion Liqueur, Bacardi Big Apple and Sierra Mist -- can't be taken as seriously as Pelaccio's cooking. Avoid the ``Strawng Island'' iced tea.

Fare is cheap. Few items are above $20 -- how unusual for Chodorow. Waiters don't push expensive water or unnecessary sides, either. Where's the Kobe?

Our big bottle of beer, two cocktails, four appetizers, two entrees and one dessert cost $153. That's a bargain in the borough of Manhattan.

Borough Food & Drink is at 12 E. 22nd St., near Broadway. Information: +1-212-260-0103; http://www.chinagrillmgt.com/bfd.

Green Fairy

Suba, a recently revamped Spanish restaurant on the Lower East Side, offers two written warnings.

The first is from the Web site:

``Limit of one visit to the `green fairy' per customer. We don't want anyone cutting off an ear.''

The green fairy is absinthe. Some say the authentic high- proof spirit prompted van Gogh to do himself harm.

The present-day anise-flavored potable is the base liquor for a flaming mojito. The bartender promised she'd make me a second if I was nice to her.

It tastes like a liquefied version of Good & Plenty. Lime balances the absinthe nicely, but the requisite mint leaves are overpowered by the fragrance of licorice.

It costs $25.

Suba is probably the only place to get the flaming mojito. Owner Yann de Rochefort said he likes to offer treats that aren't seen on many other menus.

Like cod jowl. Or cod tripe.

Chef Mullen

Those offally interesting creations come courtesy of Seamus Mullen, Suba's new chef. He's also chef at Rochefort's Boqueria, a tapas joint in the Flatiron District.

If Boqueria is rustic Spanish, Suba is modern Spanish. It always has been. This is where Alex Urena used to pack in crowds with his architectural, avant-garde take on Iberian fare. (Urena now runs his eponymous restaurant near Madison Square Park.)

Under Mullen, things are modern but simpler. Take that jowl. It's smoky, not salty; chewy, not rubbery; slick, not slimy. It is unmistakably Spanish.

The bartender recommended the fried cod tripe, sitting atop a mound of tripe-spiked creamy rice. That sliced stomach looks and tastes like one of my favorite snacks -- fried pork rinds. Fresh litchis offset the oceanic aroma.

Argan oil gave a nutty kick to raw snapper. It doubles as massage oil, the bartender said. Soft-shell crabs were flash fried in almond-chickpea flour and served in a silky nut soup. Pork belly got tiny fried bacon cubes for good measure.

Construct your meal out of four to six plates of varying sizes. My two meals for one, including two drinks per visit, cost $95 and $105. Try one of the excellent sherries by the glass.

The dining room is still downstairs from the bar, surrounded by a moat.

This is where the second warning comes into play.

``To our guests in the Grotto: Please watch your belongings carefully. We cannot be responsible for items falling in the water.''

Suba is at 109 Ludlow St., near Delancey Street. Information: +1-212-982-5714 or http://www.subanyc.com.

(Ryan Sutton is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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

Last Updated: June 26, 2007 00:05 EDT