RESTAURANTS; He's Back, Kumquats, Cornflakes and All

CRISP and angry lobster. ''Bronx style'' filet mignon of veal. A cheesecake lollipop tree with bubble-gum whipped cream.

New York culinistas will know immediately that those off-the-wall menu items can be the work of only one man, David Burke, the chef who first gave us swordfish chops and pastrami salmon.

Mr. Burke, recently unleashed from the constraints of corporate chefdom, is now performing his high-wire act twice daily not far from his old stomping grounds at the Park Avenue Cafe. In December he opened David Burke & Donatella with Donatella Arpaia, a lawyer turned restaurateur who owns Bellini. While she keeps things calm and happy in the dining room, he whizzes around the kitchen preparing complex dishes of immense fussiness that really shouldn't work, but do. There are some definite misses -- and let me quickly say that bubble-gum whipped cream is one of them.

But overall, diners here are in for terrific savories, a reasonable and unusual wine list and excellent people-watching.

The restaurant itself, in an Upper East Side town house, is done to a turn. In fact, the all-white front room, its tables filled on the nights of my visits with high-testosterone patrons, would be quite at home in Palm Beach. The main dining room, a few steps down, is fancy and formal, yet stylish. Admiring the crimson hue of the place, one of my guests declared red the new black. All sorts of red, at that: paprika banquettes, Chinese red Roman shades, a spectacular Dale Chihuly-like sculpture over the fireplace made of red glass rods that look like licorice. It is all quite grand.

This is a restaurant where you would expect to see perfectly coiffed, bejeweled women of a certain age with men in double-breasted sports jackets and striped shirts with white collars. Not to mention an astonishing number of paunchy men of a certain age who appeared to be dining with their nieces. And you do. But the Upper East Side is not what it used to be and so the dining room also supports a good number of men in cashmere Kiton sweaters and groups of young women with Prada bags at their feet. They are the new moneyed class.