Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- There are three types of Italian restaurants: Red-sauce Italian, regional Italian and avant-garde Italian.

Fiamma, an expensive Manhattan eatery run by mega- restaurateur Stephen Hanson (Dos Caminos, Blue Water Grill), belongs to the latter group. That means your gnocchi is smoked. Your praline is powdered. Your lobster is gingered. Things can get confusing.

Some will say the new chef is blameworthy. I'll say he's praiseworthy. His name is Fabio Trabocchi.

Beef tartare is to be eaten here with chopsticks, sort of. You're equipped with two long metal prongs that are attached at the end. They look like gigantic tweezers.

Don't worry; other dishes require mere forks.

Trust Trabocchi. He used to head the kitchen at Maestro in Virginia. It had a near-perfect Zagat rating. He left to overhaul Fiamma. Michael White, Fiamma's previous chef, dispensed more restrained dishes. The warm, tableclothed dining room is still intact. But White's menu is gone.

What's Italian about Caraquet oysters over tuna sashimi? Not much, unless you count the lemon confit. It's an intriguing combo of silky fish and slippery, minerally mollusks. How do you eat them? With those giant tweezers.

Cryovac Cooking

The new Fiamma isn't necessarily a restaurant for spaghetti-lovers. It's a place for foodies to contemplate and consume intricate creations.

Our half portion of ravioli contained one small raviolo. Did we get shortchanged? Perhaps. But I can't complain about the accouterment: half a shelled lobster, shimmering in a ginger- spiked glaze. The tender meat dissolved in my mouth like caviar.

Sometimes red mullet has a brilliant iodine tang. Sometimes it doesn't. Here, the delicate fish didn't. Instead, the smoky gnocchi underneath had a barely noticeable Scotch-like sting. Clever.

Suckling pig is prepared sous-vide -- cryovacked and poached at a low temperature -- before it's finally roasted. Not how Mama used to make it. Dover sole loses the brown butter treatment and gets a dose of fall colors: golden chanterelles, red wine reduction, magenta pancetta.

Then came dessert. Chocolate ganache (dense and rich) wants sugar. Just wipe up the praline ``dust'' scattered across your plate. It sweetens the palate -- and turns into a gooey caramel in your mouth.

Dinner for two cost $242.

Fiamma is at 206 Spring St., near Sixth Avenue, Manhattan. Information: +1-212-653-0100.

Park Avenue Beef

Are flat-screen televisions appropriate in a venue that serves $50 steaks? Probably not. But at Primehouse, they'll fit right in.

Hanson's newest spot has opened in the old Park Avenue Country Club space.

Was Park Avenue a country club? Hardly. It was a frat-boy sports bar with as many televisions as ESPN Zone. Primehouse is a high-end meatery. Mostly.

Hanson doesn't want to lose the old clientele. Flat-screens are going up in the lounge. And to accommodate hard-drinking co- eds, the edge of the bar top is covered with comfortable padding. Result? A four-martini face plant might not break your nose.

Breathe a sigh of relief and buy another round.

Costly Cows

Let's hope things don't get too rowdy, because my $49 Kansas City sirloin was remarkable. It was charred outside, cool and rare within. Dry aging softened the meat's heft, imparting a gamy mineral finish -- an underlying funk that's lovably discernible but not overbearing.

Just as good was the $46 Kentucky rib-eye; it was meltingly marbled -- not fatty. The dry-aged aroma was gentle.

Warning: Primehouse is a tableside restaurant. Steaks are carved tableside, which takes 2-3 minutes. Beef tartare (underseasoned) is mixed tableside, 4 minutes. Caesar salad (cold, crispy, tangy) gets tossed tableside, 5 minutes.

We spent 12 minutes with our carvers, mixers and tossers, plus additional time with servers, managers and sommeliers. Does it add up? Not really; the tableside staff is quiet and unobtrusive. Here's the hard part -- dodging all the employees on the way to the restroom.

The service is old-school 1950s. The design is bachelor-pad 1980s. Black-and-white everything evokes Tim Burton's ``Beetlejuice.'' Slender, coffin-like arches lead into the dining room. Patrick Bateman from ``American Psycho'' would kill to eat at this stylish funeral parlor.

Everything is big. The place seats 292. The rib-eye is 20 ounces. The sirloin is 18 ounces. The dirty martini is only 4 ounces but it tastes big. That's because it has veal stock. Avoid it. Fist-sized oysters are knife and fork only. The chocolate cake can feed four. Doughnuts -- deliciously heavy, old-fashioned and dense -- are sold by the box.

Our dinner for two, which included a 20 percent inaugural discount, cost $222.

Primehouse is at 381 Park Ave. South, at 27th Street, Manhattan. Information: +1-212-824-2600.

(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: October 9, 2007 00:02 EDT