Andu Restaurant & Lounge

This groovy-glam lounge-ish downtown restaurant features a modern-Med-by-the-numbers menu, a pastiche of popular items served in numerous other restaurants. Warm starters include steamed mussels, Moroccan-spiced calamari, and potato gnocchi. The last, forged from Yukon Gold, are light and luscious in a pink cream sauce salted with pecorino Romano and Serrano ham. A cold appetizer of charred beef carpaccio brought beautiful red tissues of meat with delicately caramelized outer rings, but the flavor was obfuscated by an avalanche of panzanella salad sitting on top. Main course menu descriptions are so unreliable that one might reasonably suspect they were ghost-written by James Frey: Grilled Maine lobster with chili garlic butter came coated with tomato glaze instead, "traditional paella" brought overcooked rice and no seafood besides mussels, and "milk-fed veal parmigiana" is eggplant parmigiana with minced veal in the sauce. Six mini doughnuts with crunchy orange glaze and a side cup of hot white chocolate suffice as a decent dessert.