Django is a modern sort of restaurant with all the usual accoutrements of a New York eatery; sleek tables, trendy wait staff, and patrons (i.e, lawyers from Midtown law firms) who fit neither of those categories. I'm beginning to think thatI can write that about any of the places I'll dine this summer, though, at least until I get to London.

The meal began with bread, especially for many of my companions who eschewed appetizers - unfortunately, the bread was entirely average. If you've ever eaten any of those half baked breads sold at the supermarket that you're supposed to take home and warm, then you know what it tasted like, except that one of the presented choices was supposedly a sourdough (though I couldn't taste any natural leaven to save my life), and the other was dotted with a few desultory olives. Not, I think, the best way for the restaurant to make a good first impression.

I was much more impressed with the clever carpaccio of fluke, though, marinated in red grapefruit. Fluke lends itself to carpaccio - and the restaurant had been very clever in using just a few specks of large crystal sea salt instead of any other seasoning. This way, most of the time you tasted the fish and marinade, an experience interrupted only seldomly, but with great effect, but a deep salty tang. I'd definitely recommend this dish, though my friend's choice of tuna tartare also looked serviceable. The menu also boasted a pissaladiere, which I would have ordered but for the fluke - I wonder, though, if they had given it as aggressively over to anchovies as that recipe demands.

My main course was quite an interesting "tagine" of beef - that is, a beef stew ideally baked slowly in a clay pot, a technique that hails from Morocco and has become trendy recently here. It was served in a stark white faux-tagine, which I thought did something for the presentation at table. If eating at a restaurant is half spectacle, then I think bringing a covered pot to the diner is always likely to increase his or her anticipation, and perhaps pique the interest of others sitting elsewhere (I suppose this is particularly effective if the showy dish happens to be a high profit margin food, which a beef stew generally tends to be). The citrus spiked stew was served, somewhat surprisingly, not with the traditional couscous but with basmati rice, a change I'm not sure works perfectly (couscous does a better job bathing itself in the fragrant sauce) but to which I have no real objection - certainly, if cooking rice is one of the marks of a skilled cook, the kitchen at Django has a few quality technicians working in the back. Also noteable is the fact that the sauce is sufficient to require mopping up with bread afterwards, which has always been one of my favorite parts of any meal - the whole process was made only slightly less interesting by the second rate bread, which obviously was salutorily improved by being doused in pungent gravy.

We didn't have dessert, so I can't comment, though there did seem to be a viable choice or two. All in all, I think I'd spend my own money elsewhere, but on the law firm teat, you'll never find me complaining about a kitchen like Django.