Heavy Metal

Mercury
540 Howard (at First Street), 777-1419. Open Monday through Saturday 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.; dinner served 6 to 10:30 p.m. Reservations are a must. Parking: practically a breeze. Muni: all the Market lines, 12, 14, 15, 30, 42, 45, and BART (Embarcadero station). Noise level: neither an assault nor an Eden; worsens as the evening progresses. Dress: no jeans, no sneakers. $30 per person minimum in the main dining room.

Mercury would be a treat for the senses even if you closed your eyes, plugged up your ears, and didn't order anything. The dining room is a feast of textures: velvet, woven metal, sheets of glass, driblets of glass, beads, cords, leather.

OK, now open your eyes. The restaurant is decorated in the current Fun Display palette of grays, blacks, blues, silvers, whites, and gray-lavenders. There's no host stand and no sign of the politesse that traditionally distinguishes maitres d' from bouncers. As you walk in, a small bar beckons from the right. Bubble-backed mirrors line its walls. To the left is the entrance to Mercury the lounge, which you may visit after dinner. (It doesn't generally open until 10 p.m.)

There is a haphazard quality to Mercury's service that contrasts with the care obviously put into the planning of the place's design -- and the exorbitance of its prices. The staff seems to have been hired more for its looks than for any disposition toward waiting tables or eagerness to learn, though staff members do, pleasantly enough, lack the hauteur one might expect at the sort of nexus of cool that Mercury is trying to be.

The food, cooked by David Cruz, relies on ingredients whose quality is rarely excelled elsewhere. But curiously, the cuisine does not match, nor does it often seem to strive for, the grandness of the room. Plates are largely without garnish, and the diner is not swept away in a whirlwind of spices, nor lulled by beds of butter and truffles.

The menu is split into "stimulators" and "satiators"; according to this model, the meal follows a trajectory from excitement to comfort. The stimulators include such creations as tartare of filet mignon ($14), a sausage plate ($12), and foie gras on French toast ($15). The latter has the consistency of butter, but its sweetness isn't successfully counteracted by the toast or its caramelized apple topping. Tuna poke ($14) (Cruz is from Hawaii) comprises chunks of fish that have been marinated in lime, soy, garlic, and sesame, served on seaweed and topped with "habanero dust"; it fills the mouth with flavor. The potato-leek soup ($8) is a bit of a disappointment. It promises luxury and savor, but the potatoes aren't pureed finely enough, and the soup is lacking in flavor, tasting primarily and monotonously of bacon. Portobello mushrooms ($10), roasted and served in a sauce flavored with garlic, are placed atop a mound of polenta of almost unbearable richness. The mushrooms themselves please texturally but lack flavor.

A selection of sashimi ($21), however, is a stimulator that does its job optimally. It consists of two slabs of ahi and three nori rolls containing smoked sea bass. The rolls taste deliciously of salt; the ahi epitomizes what tuna sashimi should be. As expected, the dish comes with a dipping sauce of soy with a modicum of wasabi dissolved within. Unlike most dishes on the menu, the sashimi comes with a garnish, of beet and radish threads.

So: on to the satiators. These tend to be hunks of meat, traditionally prepared. The filet mignon ($27) is virtually a dissertation on savoriness, although the flesh could be more tender. It is sweetly tempered by an abundance of carrot flavor. In fact, there's so much sauce that the meat is served in a bowl. The beef ribs entree ($17) is a portion that, unlike the filet mignon, won't necessarily fill you up. Three ribs arrive atop mounds of horseradish mashed potatoes. The braising attributed to the ribs on the menu does not account for the crust on the meat, which yields in a burst of sweetness, to reveal, unfortunately, beef whose taste should have been developed a bit more, and whose fibrousness exceeds ideal levels.

The sea bass ($24), on the other hand, is cooked perfectly: two steaks, lightly browned on the outside, a lattice of flakes within. It comes with cabbage and a sea of butter. But a special -- fettuccine with chunks of lobster and truffle shavings in a cream sauce -- was a disappointment ($25). The concentration of fat overwhelmed, and the dish swiftly descended from sufficiency, into redundancy, and finally inedibility, before the bowl was half emptied.

The dessert chef at Mercury makes art. The course offers two sampling plates: the "chocolate galaxy" and the "apple tasting." The galaxy includes a pot de creme that's beyond words, ice cream, a tartlet, cookies and truffles, and fondant. The apple tasting comprises a galette, a granita, ice cream, a confection tasting of maple, and so on. Both plates dazzle; each is $12. Dessert is the apex of a meal here; alas, the $30 minimum prohibits limiting a visit to just that course.

No doubt a lot of money was spent to make Mercury what it is. And certainly, every effort is being made to recoup this sum. Each table of diners is ingenuously given a copy of the reserve wine list -- a list available only by request at most restaurants -- which is the home of wines costing thousands of dollars. Presumably the management is hoping that, on a whim, someone, anyone, will order a bottle to impress a client or date.