25 Lusk looks great, but food is uneven

Few restaurants are as sexy as 25 Lusk, tucked into a side street off Townsend that gives it the speakeasy aura of Bix. And that's not a bad comparison, because if Bix channels all that was good in the 20th century, this restaurant does the same for the 21st. It feels like a new-age supper club.

This new San Francisco restaurant, named after its address, was years in the making. It took a multimillion-dollar budget to turn the 1917-era meat packing plant and smokehouse into a nearly 10,000-square-foot, two-story restaurant with a dining room and bar.

The downstairs includes round stainless steel fireplaces suspended from the ceiling and surrounded by lounge seating. The former smoke room has been redone with a series of cement bunkers that act as intimate private alcoves. Exposed Douglas fir beams, brick walls and cement that looks as if it absorbed decades of smoke add that de rigueur industrial loft look.

By contrast, the modern kitchen upstairs is sequestered behind glass, and some interior walls of the 115-seat dining room are plastered so they're as smooth as glass. Add to that the comfortable and modern brown leather and chrome chairs and you have a restaurant that looks very current and has a luxurious edge. It's a dramatic space, and diners can look over the half walls in the dining room and see the lounge and glassed-in private room with white leather chairs. It's a perfect blend of elements designed by the Cass Calder Smith firm, which was one of the first to popularize loftlike commercial spaces with the design of Restaurant LuLu nearly 20 years ago.

The menu created by Matthew Dolan also reads modern and interesting. Yet, for all its contemporary cachet - such dishes as petrale sole with kumquat-celery choucroute, fried mushrooms and vanilla butter ($26) - the results often remind me of the 1980s.

That's a good thing in decor, but not so great when it comes to what's on the plate. Too many dishes rely on two self-canceling techniques: swipes of vegetable purees that are superfluous when so many dishes are awash in a demi glace, and substantial sauces that mute every ingredient they touch.

For example, the quail appetizer ($14) described on the menu as coming with saffron carrot puree, caramelized onion and black pepper quail demi glace, but the sauce strong-armed any nuance of the other ingredients.

That was also the case with the pork chop with Brussels sprouts, bacon, parsley root puree and dark thyme sauce ($26). And while I loved the duck confit - it was rightfully salty, gooey and moist - the dark Champagne sauce threw a pall over everything.

On the other hand, grilled rib eye, with both foie gras butter and Zinfandel demi glace, showed what the kitchen can do with restraint. Here the sauce was lightly applied and everything supported the meat.

In many cases, instead of California-light, dishes come across as Old World heavy. They're often well prepared, but the results seem anything but contemporary, and dishes end up tasting one-dimensional. It's clear the chef has talent, but the approach seems to come from an era when instead of highlighting great ingredients, a chef simply made everything taste good by disguising them.

Vegetable purees are like visual candy, but contribute little of substance in at least six of the 16 savory appetizers and main courses. Ginger oxtail ravioli ($13) has a black garlic puree and turmeric sauce; raw yellowtail tuna is arranged on avocado puree; grilled quail is accented with a saffron carrot puree; scallops are on cauliflower; pork rib chop on parsley root; and duck confit on cannellini bean.

Flavor balance seems to be another challenge the kitchen hasn't mastered. The black trumpet mushroom risotto ($24) was great for the first couple of bites, but the pickled cauliflower or other similar ingredient gave it an acidic edge that prevented me from eating much of it. It would have made more sense as an appetizer portion.

The char ($26) was covered with a mountain of citrus-marinated fennel - again too much of a good thing because the fennel flattened the upbeat notes of tea-braised turnips and artichoke emulsion.